Do you have to peel radishes?

That is a good question to ask. And I will try to explain different perspectives of whether or not you should peel your radishes before eating or cooking them. In general, it is really beneficial to eat variety of fruit (or vegetables) including the peel. Especially when we talk about ecologically grown produce, or vegetables that we grow on our own. It is perfectly ok to eat radish without peeling them. But when we talk about cooking with radishes, here are the few main points to remember:

Peel is harder than flesh

Yes, you don’t really have to peel them. However, in some cases it might be beneficial to remove the peel depending on the circumstances. For example if the root is quite mature or even slightly overgrown, the peel part might be a bit hard to chew on. It might not be a problem if you shred them or cook them completely, but it might be noticeable when roasting or using raw in salads or garnishes.

Peel has more taste to it

The stingy taste of radish is somewhat more concentrated in the peel part of the root, so if you’re going for a milder taste, removing the peel might help you to achieve better results. On the other hand, keeping the will make your dish more piquant and “radishy” exclusive.

Dietary benefits

If you like radishes for their dietary properties (which are really great!) you might not realize, that peeling the vegetable skin takes away significant portion of fiber content. You see, the peel of root vegetables have to protect the flesh which means that it should be somewhat more resistive, which in turn means, that it has more fibers than the rest of plant. How much more? Well, it might add up to ~30% of the total fiber content of the said plaint.

Follow the recipe

Some recipes with specifically tell you to remove the skin, and some will instruct you to keep it. You should probably do as advised (unless there’s some good reason not to) because someone who worked on the recipe has some good motivation to go one way or another. You should also keep in mind that peeling the radish with change the texture and probably the color of your final result. Also, it will take more time to prepare the recipe if you add the time needed to peel each root.

Interestingly, there are specific recipes where you would use only the peel of your radish, and not the whole root. That is definitely some curious thing to explore!

All things considered, I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not you will peel the radishes.