Giardiniera: The Italian Pickle and the Chicago One

Giardiniera is two condiments with one name. In Italy it is a jar of crisp, sharp vegetables in vinegar, set out with salami and cheese before a meal. In Chicago it is a chopped, oily, often fiery relish spooned over a sandwich of thin-sliced beef. Both start the same way, with a garden's worth of cauliflower, carrots, celery and peppers. Where they split is the last step, and that step changes the flavor, the texture and the way the jar has to be kept.

What the name means

Treccani, the standard Italian dictionary, defines giardiniera in its culinary sense as an assortment of vegetables preserved in vinegar. The word comes from giardino, garden, and in another sense it simply means a woman who gardens. Treccani also notes that some of the word's food senses were borrowed from the French jardinière, the same idea of vegetables from the garden. So the Italian name promises exactly what is in the jar: a mix from the vegetable patch, kept in vinegar.

Italian giardiniera and Chicago giardiniera

The Italian style is a pickle in the plain sense. The vegetables are cut into bite-size pieces, briefly cooked in a vinegar brine and packed in it. It tastes bright and sour, the cauliflower stays crunchy, and it belongs on an antipasto plate next to olives and cured meat.

Chicago kept the vegetables and changed the finish. WTTW, Chicago's public television station, describes giardiniera there as a briny mix of peppers, celery, cauliflower and carrots packed in vinegar and oil, served as a spicy relish on the Italian beef sandwich, and a WTTW sidebar describes one fan's disappointment at the lack of Chicago-style giardiniera outside the city. The pieces are often chopped smaller so they sit on a sandwich, hot chiles go in for heat, and oil covers everything. WTTW's account of the Italian beef itself is full of competing origin stories, from a street peddler selling thin-cut beef sandwiches near the end of World War I to Depression-era Italian-American wedding feasts, and the food journalist Michael Gebert, speaking in the WTTW program, says the various theories could all be true at the same time.

Marconi makes both versions in the Chicago manner, a mild and a hot, with peppers and vegetables in oil and suggestions for Italian beef, sausage and pizza (shop Marconi hot giardiniera; shop Marconi mild giardiniera).

Why the overnight salt brine

Both styles below start with the same step: the cut vegetables spend a night in salted water in the refrigerator. Salt seasons the vegetables all the way through and draws out some of their water, so they take up the vinegar later without going soft. A rinse the next morning takes off the excess. It is the step that turns raw vegetables in vinegar into something that tastes pickled rather than merely dressed.

The rule that comes with oil

Oil is what makes Chicago giardiniera rich, and it is also the reason it has to stay cold. Health Canada explains that the bacteria behind botulism grow in moist, oxygen-free conditions, and that vegetables and herbs stored in oil can give them exactly that. Its advice for anything made at home is to keep it in the refrigerator at 4°C (40°F) or below, never at room temperature, and to use it within about seven days. Washington State University Extension adds that there are no research-tested methods for making acidified vegetable-in-oil mixtures at home.

That settles how to handle this recipe. It is a refrigerator recipe, not a canning recipe, and it is never stored on a shelf. Make a jar you will eat within a week, keep it cold the whole time, and treat the commercial jars, made with processes not available in a home kitchen, as the ones for the cupboard.

Ingredients

For about 1.5 liters (6 cups)

The vegetables

• 300 g cauliflower, cut into small florets about 2 cm across
• 2 medium carrots (about 150 g), peeled and sliced into thin coins
• 2 celery stalks (about 120 g), sliced thin
• 1 red bell pepper (about 180 g), cut into 1.5 cm pieces
• For hot giardiniera: 4 to 6 serrano peppers, sliced into thin rings; for mild, leave them out

The overnight brine

• 60 g fine sea salt
• 1.5 liters cold water

For the Italian vinegar style

• 500 ml white wine vinegar
• 250 ml water
• 30 g sugar
• 1 bay leaf

For the Chicago oil style

• 250 ml white wine vinegar
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano, such as Burlap & Barrel's Turkish oregano buds, hand-picked just before they open into flowers (shop Burlap & Barrel Turkish oregano buds)
• 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes; Burlap & Barrel's Cobanero flakes from Guatemala are in the same heat range as cayenne (shop Burlap & Barrel Cobanero chili flakes)
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• About 300 ml oil, half mild olive oil and half a neutral oil such as canola

Method

1. Brine overnight. Dissolve the salt in the cold water in a large bowl. Add all the cut vegetables, weigh them down with a plate so they stay under the brine, cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.
2. Drain, rinse and taste. Drain the vegetables, rinse them well under cold water and bite a piece of cauliflower. It should taste seasoned, not salty. If it is too salty, soak the vegetables in fresh cold water for 20 minutes and drain again.
3. Italian style: blanch in the vinegar. Bring the vinegar, water, sugar and bay leaf to a boil, add the vegetables, bring back to a boil and cook for 1 minute. The cauliflower should still snap when you bite it. Take the pan off the heat.
4. Italian style: jar it. Pack the vegetables and hot liquid into clean jars so the liquid covers them, let them cool to room temperature, then close and refrigerate.
5. Chicago style: dress in vinegar. Toss the drained vegetables in a bowl with the vinegar, garlic, oregano, chili flakes and black pepper. Let them sit for 30 minutes, stirring once, so the vinegar reaches every piece before the oil goes on.
6. Chicago style: cover with oil. Pack the vegetables and their vinegar into clean jars and pour in enough oil to cover them completely. Close and refrigerate at once. Olive oil turns cloudy and thick in the cold, which is why it is cut with a neutral oil; let the jar sit out for a few minutes before serving and it loosens.
7. Rest, then eat within the week. Let either style rest in the refrigerator for at least a day so the flavors settle. Keep it cold, use a clean spoon, and finish it within a week.

When it goes wrong

A note for Denver kitchens

Altitude touches one step. Colorado State University Extension notes that water boils at 212°F at sea level but at about 203°F at 5,000 feet, so the Italian-style blanch happens at a lower temperature in Denver than in a sea-level kitchen. A minute at a Denver boil is a slightly gentler minute, which suits a pickle that should stay crisp. Judge by the bite rather than the clock: the cauliflower should still snap. The oil-style giardiniera is not cooked at all, so altitude does not change it.

How to use it

Chicago giardiniera was built for the Italian beef, but it goes wherever a sandwich wants heat and crunch: on sausage, on a slice of pizza, folded into scrambled eggs, chopped into a tuna salad. The oil itself is worth keeping for the life of the jar; it carries the chile and oregano into a vinaigrette or onto toast. The Italian style is happiest beside cured meat, cheese and olives, and the marinated olives recipe makes a natural partner on the plate, with more from the olives and tapenades collection. For more heat without chopping, Calabrian hot cherry peppers in extra virgin olive oil from Azienda Agricola Scalzo bring a fruity heat of their own (shop Scalzo Calabrian hot cherry peppers).

Giardiniera belongs to the wider family of vegetables preserved in brine and vinegar, and the cornichons and pickles guide covers the rest of that family, while the pickled, brined and oil-soaked goods collection has jars from both sides of the Atlantic.

What the two styles share is the garden: a handful of everyday vegetables, salted and soured until they taste like more than themselves. What separates them is what each city wanted to put them on. Italy wanted something sharp to wake up the palate before a meal. Chicago wanted something hot and rich to stand up to a sandwich soaked in beef juice. Both answers are right, and one jar of each in the refrigerator makes the case.

See also: the Pacific Pickle Works collection.

Sources & Further Reading

• Treccani Vocabolario: giardiniera (Italian)
• WTTW Chicago: What Is Italian Beef?
• Health Canada: Food safety tips for vegetables and herbs in oil
• Washington State University Extension: Herb and Vegetable Flavored Oils
• Colorado State University Extension: Elevation and Safe Home Food Preservation