Salads can be boring. Winter flavors can get old. And that’s why this dish is so refreshing! It tastes like summer, with the radishes being balanced out by winter’s saving grace (citrus!), and a light dusting of mint to wake your tastebuds up from hibernation.
While I fully support any and all indulgence in comfort food on these chilly days, trust me when I say this radish & blood orange winter salad recipe is the perfect palette cleanser to all of that. 
Radish & Blood Orange Winter Salad Recipe // serves two
- One bunch radishes (we used Easter Egg radishes for a fun color variety!)
- 2 Small Blood Oranges
- 2 Mint Sprigs
- ¼ cup Whole Pistachios
- Avocado Oil
- Maldon Salt
- Edible Flowers (optional!)
As always, our recipes are pretty and easy. If I ever write a cookbook, that’ll probably be the title. Ha!
Start by thinly slicing all the radishes, then set aside. I find it easier to slice the oranges and then peel them rather than to slice them after they’re peeled. If you’re finding them hard to peel (like ours were) then simply trimming the rind off of them works as well.
Next, take the leaves from about two stems of mint and and chop them up and set aside. Chop the pistachios and set aside as well. NOTE: If you’re buying pistachios that are already chopped, you should adjust your measurements! You probably won’t need an entire ¼ cup. 
Then comes the only hard part in the entire recipe: making the dish look pretty! Start with a layer of the larger radishes first, then build your salad from there, layering in oranges and sprinkling in the smaller radishes. Don’t try too hard – it should be organic. The reason you want to layer rather than tossing this salad is that the blood oranges will stain the radishes and you’ll lose all the pretty colors!
Once you’re done layering, lightly pour the avocado oil over the salad, then sprinkle the salt, mint and pistachios to garnish. If you’ve decided to get very fancy and add your edible flowers, I like to do a few whole ones so people know what they’re eating, then pull the petals of one to garnish. In this case we used marigolds.
Notes: The key to this salad is the ratio of radishes to oranges. The citrus can overwhelm easily, so keeping the ratio somewhere around a 2-1 is good (in favor of the radishes, if that’s not clear!). Also, our Blood Oranges for this recipe were very small, so if you have larger ones, you might be able to get away with just one!
Avocado oil was a flavor choice for me – it’s so subtle! Like the essence of avocado without having the actual fruit. If you don’t have avocado oil, you can also definitely substitute with olive oil.
We love to see when you try our recipes, so do post yours on the #ckrecipes feed!
Looking for more salad recipes to stay on those new year’s resolutions? Try our Balela Bean Salad (a personal fave), a rainbow veggie ribbon salad, and this citrus and fennel salad that I’m way overdue to make again!
