Radishes + Butter: 3 Ways to Prepare the Seconds-to-Make, Party-Ready Snack

There are very few unimprovable unions. As a pairing, radishes and butter are near the top. They’re in it together, forever. The crisp tingle of a bite of radish is instantly emphasized and improved by a layer of pacifying butter. For flavor fireworks, the only thing you need to add is salt. It’s crunch-smooth-crunch. This extraordinarily simple combination of fresh, plus fat, plus saline is one of the best there is. Radishes and butter can be a luxurious snack-for-one (we call it self care), but they can also star at a cold-season party, with some holiday-ready frills.

Here are three quick ways to devour them.

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

First, catch your radish. Early winter farmers’ markets still offer rainbows of freshly-pulled radishes, and later will sell the roots, minus their leaves, from cold storage. This does not affect their flavor. And don’t turn down the humble bunches at your local supermarket: If their leaves are still in good shape, cut them immediately and add them to a minestrone, or just wilt them and serve with olive oil and lemon (atop toast doesn’t hurt). Keep the radishes themselves in the crisper drawer, well-wrapped, where they will last for many weeks.

Here are three ways to enjoy radishes and butter:

1. With Pine Nuts and Warm Butter

We didn’t say the butter had to be cold: Toast pine nuts in melted butter and top some cold, salted radishes with the warm nuts and any remaining butter. This can be a quick lunch or a surprisingly effective supper-party appetizer.

2. With Roe and Brown Butter

Party food: Staying with the melted butter theme but going one stage further, drizzle brown butter—the nutty stage of butter that makes everything taste three layers richer—over rounds of radish topped with salmon roe (which stands in for salt). Before adding the salmon eggs, spear each radish slice with a toothpick, for easy lifting from a passed plate. One small jar of roe will make about 18 canapés.

No salmon roe? Substitute morsels of smoked trout or mackerel, or smoked oysters or mussels.

For brown butter: Melt butter very gently over low heat until the milk solids (pale and floaty) sink and begin to turn brown.

With Butter on Bread

Black radishes, red and purple radishes, brown radishes—each has a slightly different texture and flavor. Some are sweet and juicy, some are dense and nose-twistingly spicy. For a radish-tasting, crowd them around a mountain of mashed butter that is cloaked in flaky salt.

In the end, the classic treatment wins. Radishes and butter do not taste better than when served on thin slices of fresh, good bread: a Parisian-style baguette is my favorite, with a brittle crust enclosing a soft crumb. Spread with butter, add radishes, and season recklessly with flaky salt.

And they will still be here in spring. Then, you can eat radishes with tulip petals.

See also:

• Naancaccia: A Butter-Drenched, No-Knead Flatbread Singing with Field Garlic
• Cranberry Hand Pies: A Festive Necessity
• Roast Carrot Pâté: Vegan and Versatile