Turnips ferment beautifully: cut into sticks or rounds and covered with a salt brine, they turn crisp, tangy and mellow in about a week, losing much of their raw bite. Add a slice of beet and they turn the shocking pink of the pickled turnips served with shawarma and falafel. The recipe card below uses a 3% brine measured by weight – 30 g salt per litre of water.
Weigh the Salt
Salt is what lets the lactic acid bacteria that are naturally on vegetables outcompete spoilage microbes, so it’s worth getting right (NCHFP). Spoon measures are unreliable because salt crystals vary so much in size – a spoonful of fine table salt can weigh about twice as much as the same spoonful of flaky kosher salt. For roots like turnips, a brine of about 3% by weight (30 g salt dissolved in 1 litre of water) is a good middle ground: salty enough to steer the fermentation, mild enough to keep the pickles pleasant.
Fermented or Vinegar-Pickled?
Many Middle Eastern pickled turnips (lift, torshi left) are made with vinegar in the brine, and many restaurant versions are quick vinegar pickles. Those aren’t fermented foods in the scientific sense – an international expert panel excludes vegetables pickled in vinegar from the definition (Marco et al., 2021) – and they contain no live cultures. Fermented turnips get their sourness from lactic acid bacteria instead; eaten raw, they contain live cultures. Both are good; just know which you’re making. A splash of vinegar at serving time doesn’t change what’s in the jar.
Turnip Ferments Around the World
- Şalgam (Turkey): a red, cloudy, sour drink made by lactic fermentation of black carrot, turnip, salt, bulgur flour and sourdough (Tanguler et al., 2017).
- Sunki (Kiso, Japan): an unsalted pickle of red turnip leaves. When batches failed to acidify properly, researchers found less Lactobacillus, more Limosilactobacillus reuteri, less lactic acid and a build-up of ammonia (Tomita et al., 2024) – a reminder that a quick, steady drop in pH is what keeps a vegetable ferment on track.
- Kkakdugi (Korea): cubed radish kimchi – the same idea with radish, chili and garlic; see kimchi.
Nutrition
Raw turnips have about 28 kcal, 21 mg vitamin C, 1.8 g fiber and 191 mg potassium per 100 g (USDA). Fermented turnips keep most of that and add live lactic acid bacteria if eaten raw – but they also take up salt from the brine, so eat them as a side or condiment. For more root ferments, see fermented radishes, Friuli’s grape-pomace turnips brovada and beet kvass; for films, mold and soft pickles, our troubleshooting guide.
