Radish in Chile Oil

This pickle is a staple—and one of the most frequent preserved vegetables found at your local Chinese grocery store. When you make your own, daikon radish is the way to go, but feel free to experiment with any other kind of large winter radish, including watermelon radish, black radish, or even mild turnip. Note that you don’t have to make your own chile sauce for this recipe, but the option is there for the culinary overachievers among us. The heat in chile sauce can not only vary from brand to brand and from batch to batch, but also on the age of the bottle sitting in your refrigerator door—so add chile sauce to taste.

Makes 4 cups TIME: 3 DAYS

1½ pounds daikon

2 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 to 3 tablespoons homemade or store-bought chile sauce

1 tablespoon black sesame oil

2 teaspoons sugar

Trim and peel the radish and chop it into ½-inch-thick disks, then slice the disks into ¼-inch strips. In a medium mixing bowl, toss the radish with the salt and let it sit for 30 minutes, stirring it once halfway through. Drain the resulting liquid and discard, and rinse the radish to ridit of some of its saltiness. Return the radish to the bowl and toss it thoroughly with the soy sauce, chile sauce, sesame oil, and sugar.

Pack the radish and all of its liquid into a shallow container with a tight lid. Let it sit on the countertop for 24 hours before refrigerating. Your radish is ready to eat after 3 days. Refrigerated, it will keep for about 2 weeks.

hancheng

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