Radish Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

I’m celebrating the late winter season with this vibrant Radish Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette. It’s packed with flavor and texture, and is sweet, tangy, and earthy. This winter salad is bursting with flavor, and almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

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• Radish Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe Notes
• Recipe

When we lived in Virginia, most summers I kept some kind of garden. Some years it was (relatively) big and bountiful, and other years it was just a collection of pots I’d cobbled together.

Every year I tried to grow radishes. And every year I failed.

Every. Single. Year.

It was such a head-scratcher. Tomatoes? No problem. Peppers? Plentiful. Salad greens? Grew like weeds. But radishes simply didn’t care for my garden vibes.

One year I managed to grow a single, perfect sparkler radish, and I thought I’d finally cracked the radish code! But when I pulled up the rest of his radish top friends, they were barren. Twas a bittersweet day.

Nevertheless, my love for radishes persists. Because radishes are really, really rad. They’re sweet and earthy and spicy and so delightfully crunchy, and I eat them whenever I can.

My most recent winter CSA haul included a generous bag of tender pea shoots. After tossing them into frittatas and basic leafy green salads for a couple of days, I finally decided they needed more colorful companions, so I whipped up this radish salad with meyer lemon vinaigrette. And you should too. Because radishes are rad.

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Radish Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe Notes

Variety is the spice of life, and that’s particularly true with radishes.

Some are a little spicier. Some are a little sweeter. And some are just so darn pretty you can’t resist tossing them into a salad (I’m looking at you, watermelon radishes).

I used three different varietals for this radish salad to keep the textures and flavors as interesting as possible. A watermelon radish (sweet and spicy), some french breakfast radishes (more sweet than spice), and a couple of china rose (more spice than sweet). This recipe is really forgiving, though, so use what you can find that’s fresh and local.

I sliced the radishes super thin using my mandoline, along with half an english cucumber. I peeled the watermelon radish first, because the skin can be a little bitter. I also sliced it in half because it was gigantic.

At the very last minute, I decided this salad needed one more punch of color and flavor, so I added some naval oranges. An excellent call if I do say so myself. I cut the oranges into supremes, and the process is easier than it looks.

Start by trimming the ends and slicing off the skin, like I did with the citrus in my winter kale salad. Then, instead of slicing the oranges into crosswise sections, you’ll remove each section. To do so, use a very sharp knife and cut along the membrane line on one side of the section, then cut along the other side to release the orange section.

The resulting slice of fruit is called a “supreme”, a name which I find to be utterly ridiculous and super fabulous all at the same time. If you need a better visual, this is a superb tutorial on how to supreme citrus.

The real magic here, though, is this sweet, tangy, creamy meyer lemon dressing. It pairs perfectly with the spicy, earthy notes from the radishes and greens, and adds a punchy, bright finish to this lovely hot mess of delicious.

This radish salad is celebratory, seasonal, and fork lickin’ good.

Did you make this Watermelon Radish Salad? I’d love to know how it turned out! Leave a comment and a rating below.

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Recipe

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