Polish Radish & Cucumber Kefir Salad (Surówka z Rzodkiewki)

My mum made this every single Friday in spring, the moment the first bunches of radishes appeared at the market. She’d buy two or three bunches, the kind with the leaves still on and the roots still carrying a little dirt, and by lunchtime there’d be a bowl of this on the table. It sounds almost too simple to be worth writing about — sliced radishes, cucumber, kefir — but somehow it’s one of those things I crave more reliably than almost anything else when the weather turns warm.

Surówka, which just means “raw salad” in Polish, is the category rather than a single dish. Every Polish household has its own version, and the radish one is probably the most common spring expression of it. Traditionally it was made with soured cream or śmietana, which is richer and slightly less sharp than Western sour cream. I switched to kefir years ago partly out of habit and partly because the lighter, more acidic quality of kefir suits the peppery bite of radishes better than cream does. It also means the whole bowl sits at around 85 calories per serving, which is the kind of number that lets you eat it without doing any arithmetic in your head.

What makes it work as a diet-friendly snack rather than just a side dish is the combination of fibre from the raw vegetables and the protein and probiotics in the kefir. It keeps you fuller than its calorie count suggests it should, and the fermented base is genuinely good for gut health in a way that feels less like a claim on a packaging label and more like something you notice after eating it regularly for a few weeks. The sharp, almost radish-hot crunch against the cool, faintly sour cream of the kefir is one of my favourite contrasts in Polish food.

Serving Ideas & Variations

This works beautifully alongside open-faced rye bread with a thin scrape of butter, which is how my mum always served it. It also sits well next to grilled chicken or poached fish if you want to build it into a fuller meal rather than eat it as a standalone snack. Some people add a grated small apple for sweetness — I do this occasionally in late summer when the radishes are a little more bitter, and it works surprisingly well. A few finely chopped chives can stand in for the spring onions if that’s what you have, and a small clove of garlic pressed into the kefir dressing turns it into something altogether more assertive if that’s the direction you want to go.

Storage

The trick I learnt the hard way is that this salad does not keep well once dressed. The vegetables continue weeping liquid even after the initial salting step, and after a couple of hours in the fridge the whole thing becomes a puddle. If I’m making it ahead, I prep the vegetables, salt and squeeze them, and keep them in one container, then mix the kefir dressing separately and combine everything just before eating. That way it stays crisp for several days’ worth of quick lunches.