Fermented Radish and Onion Spread
A stinky pickled radish spread you make at home and carry in a jar. No cooking at camp.
- calories
- 190
- weight
- 2 oz
- cal / oz
- 95
- protein
- 2 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Lunch
- No cook
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Day hike
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Winter radishes | 2 lb | black Spanish, daikon, or green meat radish |
|---|---|---|
| Sea salt or kosher salt | 5% of the radish weight by scale | about 1.6 oz for 2 lb |
| Garlic | 3 cloves | minced |
| Yellow sweet onion | 1/2 medium | minced fine |
| Rendered poultry fat | 1/2 cup | schmaltz; sunflower oil works and keeps the jar vegan-adjacent, though not vegan |
Method
- At home, peel and grate the radishes on the coarse side of a box grater.
- Weigh the grated radish and add salt equal to 5 percent of that weight. Toss until every strand is coated.
- Pack it into a vacuum bag and seal, or press it into a quart jar under its own brine with a weight on top.
- Leave it at room temperature four to seven days. It will smell like something died. That is the ferment working, not a failure.
- Drain and squeeze the radish hard in a clean towel. Any water left behind will separate in the jar.
- Mix the squeezed radish with the garlic, onion, and fat until it holds together as a spread. Pack into a small screw-top jar.
- In camp, let the jar sit out thirty minutes before eating. Cold fat makes it grainy. Spread on crackers or hard bread.
This is a home-prep condiment, not a camp recipe. All the work happens days before you leave: grate, salt, wait, squeeze, mix. What you carry is two ounces of finished spread per person that adds fat and a hard flavor edge to crackers, hard salami, or a foil packet of fish.
Two things decide whether it works. Squeeze the fermented radish until it stops dripping, because trapped water separates out and turns the jar into a slick mess in a warm pack. And use poultry fat or sunflower oil, not beef or pork fat, which set up hard and stay that way until you warm the jar. Even so, let it come to air temperature before you open it.
Packing
One small wide-mouth jar with a gasket lid, taped shut, upright in a side pocket. It rides in a cooler on car trips and lasts a long weekend out of one. Double-bag it: the smell gets into everything.
Variations
- Sunflower oil in place of the poultry fat stays soft in the cold and does not need a cooler as badly.
- Ramps or scallions instead of the onion if you can get them.
- Stir a spoonful into instant mashed potatoes for a sharper dinner.
https://foragerchef.com/ramp-radish-conserve-retach-mit-shmaltz