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Chicago-Style Hot Giardiniera Recipe

Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: American, Italian

Ingredients
  

Stage 1: Chop and brine
  • 2 green bell peppers diced
  • 2 red bell peppers diced
  • 8 (or more) fresh green chillies, ideally jalapeño or serrano sliced
  • 1 celery stalk diced
  • 1 medium carrot diced
  • 1 small onion chopped
  • 1/2 cup fresh cauliflower florets
  • water to cover
  • 1/2 cup sea salt
Stage 2: Marinate / pickle
  • white distilled vinegar
Stage 3: To finish the giardiniera
  • 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon dried oregano
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes optional
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper optional
  • olive oil

Method
 

Stage 1: Chop and brine
  1. Place into a bowl the green and red peppers, jalapenos, celery, carrots, onion, and cauliflower. Sprinkle over the salt, and fill with enough cold water to cover. Cover and leave for about 8-12 hours.
Stage 2: Marinate / pickle
  1. The next day, drain salty water, and rinse vegetables. Place back in a bowl and cover with the vinegar. Cover and again leave for another 8-12 hours.
Stage 3: To finish the giardiniera
  1. Drain the vegetables but reserve the vinegar. Put the vegetables back into the bowl.
  2. Add in the garlic, oregano, red pepper flakes, and black pepper. Combine well.
  3. Pack into jars - I use a spoon to pack in the vegetables pretty tightly. Pour over olive oil to just about cover the vegetables, then top up with a little bit of the reserved vinegar. (Olive oil is pretty expensive so you can use more vinegar, up to a 50/50 ratio of olive oil/vinegar. I have noticed that when using more vinegar, the resulting giardiniera tends to get cloudy, but it's still tasty!)
  4. Cover, and refrigerate for a day or two before using (if you can wait this long! I usually can't).

Notes

Feel free to adjust the quantity of vegetables to suit your liking. Once you’ve chopped everything and mixed it in a bowl, you can look at the mix and decide if you want to up the quantity of anything – I almost always add a bit more carrot and cauliflower. The red chilli flakes are optional – if your jalapeños aren’t very spicy, you might want to add them to up the heat factor a bit. As to chopping the vegetables, the size is up to you – sometimes life calls for a finely chopped giardiniera (great for putting on sandwiches, hot dogs, etc) but chunky giardiniera is best for the relish platter.