Demystifying Daikon, and my mom's favorite: Pickled Daikon!

Our ingredient guide to Daikon

Welcome to issue #007 of the 🔒 Cookbook Confidential 🔒! Each week, I send 1 private newsletter with private recipes, guides, and drafts we're developing for the book.

If you want to help shape our efforts in making a timeless Cantonese cookbook, join our community of 500+ members. You’ll get a digital copy once it’s ready, as well as full access to our weekly Cookbook Confidential and our private group chat. Founding Members will also have their name in our cookbook acknowledgements, and a signed physical copy.

---

This is one of many ingredient deep dives we’re planning on doing for our cookbook. The aim is so that when you and I go to 99 Ranch or an Asian supermarket, we feel as confident as our parents’ generation does with shopping and cooking with Cantonese ingredients.

This is a first draft straight from my questionnaire / cooking shoot with my dad. I plan on adding illustrations and editing it down with my editor when it comes time to compile all of the ingredients together.

This guide will answer the most burning questions:

• What does it taste like?

• What are the varieties within this ingredient? What is most common within Cantonese cooking?

• When shopping, how do you find the best product?

• What is the seasonality of this ingredient?

• How do you extend the shelf life for as long as possible?

• What types of cooking methods work? What are example dishes?

• How do you wash/prep?

And afterwards, we’ll share my dad’s Pickled Daikon recipe (my mom’s favorite!)

My parents’ guide to Daikon

My dad used to grow daikon (and other crops) in a little plot of garden space in his village in Toisan, probably about the size of our current kitchen island or a twin-sized mattress. He and his mom used to tend to their garden together, deepening their bond with each other with every passing season until they were separated.

Given their limited garden space, it would take 2-3 months for the fruits of their labor to be realized, but it was always well-worth the effort come springtime.