Bread, Adorned: Radish Sandwiches

A few years ago, we were pretty deep into our initial run through the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches, and I received this message from a fan of the site:

My “Army brat” wife turned me on to radish sandwiches, which her mother made her while they lived in Germany in the ‘60s.

Slice some radishes, fresher the better.

Slice an onion roll in half, butter both sides.

Add sliced radishes, then salt (maybe pepper) to taste.

Awesome with a beer.

If you’re tempted to mess with simplicity & perfection, consider adding thin sliced onion, or even pickled onion.

Tom L., in an email

When this message came through in June of 2018, we were running through the Ps–Pork chop, Pork tenderloin, Prawn roll–and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to simply pop Radish sandwiches onto our List and cover it, if not the next month then soon after. At the time though I was still concentrating on the Wikipedia list and only adding sandwiches to our list that came from that one source.

Here we are though, years later, having long since realized that there are innumerable sandwiches this world has to offer that have not yet made their way onto the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches, and may never. Radish sandwiches seem to deserve a place there though. Despite or perhaps because of their simplicity, they are ubiquitous. The internet abounds with blogs and videos extolling their virtues. They are widespread, beloved, and exceedingly simple, so simple that it takes Jacques Pépin about 15 seconds to describe how to make one.

I’ve made more than a few sandwiches using radishes, but mine have tended to use pickled radishes as a condiment, rather than fresh radishes as the primary ingredient. There are of course the Bánh mì that are among my favorite sandwiches and use pickled Daikon radishes and carrots as an accent element. One of the sandwiches in the photo montage that has been the background for this website since we started back in 2014 consisted of country ham, hard-boiled egg, white cheddar and pickled radish on toast with mayo & dijon mustard. Recently Becky, a friend from one of several Facebook sandwich groups I’m in, shipped me some excellent pickled radishes she’d made. I used them in a sandwich with my homemade Canadian bacon, pork liver pâté, Kewpie mayo, and arugula, a sort of Anglo bánh mì that nevertheless was delicious enough to make again several times over the course of a week.

Delicious as they are though, these are not the sandwiches we are looking for. Radish sandwiches consist of 4 ingredients–bread, butter, radishes, and salt. Some sources advise adding some black pepper or even a little onion, to give the peppery and pungent character of the radishes a little boost. I’d rather just stack some more radishes in there.

Since it is such a simple sandwich, and such a short ingredient list, I wanted to start with the best vresions of those ingredients that I could find. March is not a bad time to pick up sweet spring radishes–I bought organic radishes from a few different grocery stores and the biggest difference I could tell between the organic radishes and the kind I usually buy is that the organic ones had more dirt on them; I picked up a roll of Amish butter, which I’ve always liked better than what I can get in most stores; I bought a loaf of Vienna bread from the often-mentioned Damato’s Bakery on Grand Avenue in Chicago; and I used Maldon sea salt, which comes in great pyramid-shaped flakes that add a unique character when used as a “finishing” salt, such as salting thin-sliced radishes before serving. .

A good slice of bread such as the Damato’s Vienna bread requires no toasting–simply butter the bread generously, slice the radishes thinly (I used a mandoline slicer), and sprinkle a little salt on top. Many of the articles you’ll find online about radish sandwiches serve them just like this, open-faced, perhaps garnished with a little greenery.

Here’s a silly question: do you like bread? You’re reading a sandwich website but it’s not necessarily a given. For some–in fact, for the namesake of the sandwich, ol’ Johnny Montagu–the bread of a sandwich is just a handle, a carrying case for a slice of meat or cheese or whatever is contained inside. A competing school of thought though holds that the bread is the most vital part of the sandwich, the meats and cheeses and salads and condiments and various other accoutrements mere adornments.

It’s not a zero sum game I suppose–both can be true of different types of sandwiches. But when you start with a very strong piece of bread and spread it with a nice, fatty, hand-churned butter, any resulting sandwich would tend toward supporting the latter theory. Radishes are not the most assertive-flavored topping that could adorn this bread, but they have some crunch and a slight peppery bite that can’t be entirely discounted either.

As good as the Vienna loaves from Damato’s are, their extra-long baguettes are the foundation for many of the best sandwiches in the Chicago area. I doubt that radishes and butter will overtake capocollo and provolone as the fillings of choice for Chicago sub sandwiches any time soon, but this was a good use of the bread regardless. I sliced the radishes thicker to offset the thicker bread, but this one needed something else–some onions and black pepper as suggested, possibly, or a slice of sharp cheese.

Tom, the fan of the site who suggested this sandwich, mentioned that they were made with onion rolls during his wife’s Army brat childhood in Germany. I do not know whether onion rolls are a common item in Germany–halfassed research keeps redirecting me to Zwiebelkuchen, a kind of onion-topped flatbread that is more savory tart than sandwich roll. Of course when I think of German-style bread rolls, my mind turns to the Brotchen that my wife has described from her own Army brat childhood–crusty, soft-crumbed, round rolls perfect for cutting open and spreading with butter and sour cherry jam.

In this case of course we are instead spreading it with butter and covering that with the same thin-sliced radishes and flaky sea salt. It’s as good a version of this sandwich as any we had–the bread soft on the inside with a crisp exterior; the thick layer of soft butter; the crisp thin slices of radish and the crunch of the occasional salt crystal.

There’s really not much to say about this sandwich–it’s simple, and depending on how much you like radishes, bread, and butter, it’s either boring or it’s perfect. Judging by the number of pages on the internet raving about this combination, it seems like most people like radishes, bread, and butter just fine. I’d like to try it with a stronger-flavored radish sometime, or maybe even add a little horseradish to it.

Do you have a favorite type of radish to use in radish sandwiches? Let me know in a comment and I’ll see if I can grow some in my garden this year!

@sandwichidiot Radish sandwich #radishsandwiches #sandwichtribunal #brotchen #amishbutter #maldonsalt #radishes ♬ original sound – Jim Behymer