So, I’m starting a new weekly feature where I try to cook with a new ingredient I’ve never used before. My goal is to go to the farmer’s market every week and pick something mysterious and strange-looking and try to make something yummy with it.

This week’s mystery ingredient is: …. wait for it ….. waaaaaaaaiiiiiit foooor iiiitt … Daikon!

It’s the white stuff on the right! Btw don’t the rainbow carrots look amazing?! I love rainbow carrots! Does it feel like I’m screaming? In my head I’m screaming. My favorite one is the purple carrot with a neon lime green core and tip. 

I mean come on! Gorgeous. Gorgeous. 

Moving on. When I bought the daikon I actually thought I was buying a bunch of parsnips. Lol. Shows how much I know. Then when I got home and googled parsnips they didn’t look like what I got. Then as I was looking through the pics I saw something that looked like what I had and lo and behold, it was daikon. 

Step two was figuring out what is traditionally done with daikon. Apparently it can be pickled with carrots to make do chua, a Vietnamese refrigerator pickle that is used in banh mi, a Vietnamese sandwich. I was actually going to go this route but then I realized I didn’t have (and didn’t feel like buying) the ingredients to make it.

I ended up roasting them with some rainbow carrots (!) and they came out great. Although, I don’t think I really like the natural flavor of daikon, especially when eating carrots at the same time because the carrots were so good that they made the daikon feel like some sort of punishment.

I roasted them at 400F for about 15-20mins. Maybe pickling them would have been better….. Anyway .. stay tuned for next week’s Mystery Ingredient…..

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