Vietnamese Carrot and Radish Pickle is a mixture of thinly-sliced daikon radish and carrot strips pickled in a sweet vinegar sauce. Here are directions for making a home-canned version.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz) OR half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 6 x half-litre (US pint) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 10 minutes either size jar
Vietnamese Carrot and Radish Pickle
Ingredients
- 1 kg daikon radish (2 lbs)
- 1 kg carrots (2 lbs)
- 750 ml white vinegar (5% acidity or higher. 3 cups / 24 oz)
- 750 ml water (3 cups / 24 oz)
- 350 g sugar (white. 1 ½ cups / 12 oz) OR 2 teaspoons liquid stevia
- 2 teaspoons ginger root (fresh, grated)
- 6 star anise (whole. optional)
- Pickle Crisp (optional)
- chile flakes (optional)
Instructions
- Wash and peel the carrots and radish. Cut into thin batons about 5 mm (¼ thick). Length can vary but keep in mind the height of your jars minus about 3 cm (1 inch). Set aside.
- In a large pot, mix the vinegar, water, sugar, and ginger. Set on stove to start heating.
- In each of your washed jars, put 1 star anise piece, ¾ teaspoon Pickle Crisp (optional) and a pinch of dried chile flake (optional.)
- Fill each jar with carrot and radish strips. Leave 2 cm (¾ inch) headspace.
- If liquid isn't boiling, crank heat to bring to a boil.
- Fill each jar with hot liquid, leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process jars for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after a couple weeks of pickling in the jar.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Australia and New Zealand vinegar strength special notes.
Recipe notes
- If you have a mandolin, you could use it to make thin, broad slices, then stack those in layers and use a French knife to cut them into batons.
- You could swap some or all of the white vinegar for unseasoned rice vinegar, as long as you were sure that the rice vinegar were 5% acid or higher — check the bottle first. If the bottle doesn’t say, then don’t use it, it probably isn’t.
- You can swap some of the water for lemon or lime juice — fresh or bottled — if you don’t mind a bit of cloudiness to your brine.
- Ginger is very easy to grate when frozen; store in a bag in the freezer if you only use it occasionally. You could also use equal amounts of ginger from a tube — if you don’t mind a bit of cloudiness to your brine.
- If you want a bit of a salt hit, you could add a ½ teaspoon of salt, or non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub such as Herbamare Sodium-Free to each jar before filling it.
- You can reduce the sugar, or use the same volume amount of granulated Splenda®, or use 2 teaspoons of liquid stevia. We’d recommend Better Stevia liquid stevia .
- Yes, you need to peel the carrots and the radish, in order to get the bacterial load down.
- If you aren’t sure about the star anise flavour, try it in just a jar or two, especially if you aren’t usually a liquorice-taste fan.
Recipe source
Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving. Toronto, Canada: Bernardin Ltd. 2013, page 86.
Versions of this recipe are also found in:
- Carrot and Daikon Pickles. Canadian Living Test Kitchen. The Complete Preserving Book. Montreal, Canada: Transcontinental Books. 2012. Page 161. (Refrigerated version not for canning. Adds cucumber and fish sauce.)
- Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon Radish. Kingry, Judi and Lauren Devine. Ball / Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving. Toronto: Robert Rose. 2015. Page 312.
- Asian-Style Carrot-and-Daikon Pickles. Butcher, Meredith L., Ed. The All New Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. New York: Oxmoor House. 2016. Page 232. (Adds salt.)
Modifications made:
- Add options of dried chile flake and salt to each jar.
About this recipe
In Vietnamese, this is called do chua (đồ chua) which means, “sour stuff.”
The pickle is used particularly for the famous Vietnamese baguette sandwiches known as “Banh Mì.” It’s also used with salads such as Lotus Stem salad, and rice noodle salads. It’s good as a side accompaniment to cooked spring rolls, as well as being good inside Vietnamese fresh spring rolls — the ones with fresh veg inside a rolled-up rice paper wrap (aka gỏi cuốn, summer rolls, rice paper rolls, salad rolls, etc).
In Vietnam, there tends to be more radish in the mix, because it’s cheap there, with just a bit of carrot for colour. In the West, there tends to be more carrot in the mix, because it’s cheaper than the daikon radish. This recipe aims for a 50 / 50 mix.
There are regional variations in Vietnam:
- In Northern Vietnam, the pickle tends to be hotter (from chiles) and sweeter;
- In Southern Vietnam, the pickle tends to be saltier, but less sweet and less hot.
Daikon radishes are the long, long white radish with a mild taste. Korean varieties of daikon tend be be thicker, while Japanese varieties tend to be narrower.
For the carrots, you could also use some heritage purple etc carrots in addition to the orange carrots for more colour.
Safety Check
This Carrot and Radish Pickle has a pH of 3.57. Well below upper safety cut-off of 4.6 pH.
Nutrition information
The calories are so low in the sugar-free version, and we do want to keep comparison serving sizes the same, that we couldn’t go much less than showing serving size as ½ a jar, or we’d be into fractions. An actual average serving size would be far less, meaning that the calories in the sugar-free version are trivial.
Regular Version
Per ½ jar (¼ litre / ½ US pint in volume)
- 169 calories, 63 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 4 points
Sugar-Free Version
Per ½ jar (¼ litre / ½ US pint in volume)
- 60 calories, 63 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 point
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
* Pickle Crisp ® is a registered trademark of the Jarden Corporation.
* Bernardin ® is a registered trademark of the Jarden Corporation.
