Giardiniera
Hard vegetables blanched and packed under vinegar and oil. Every Italian household has a jar and no two agree on what goes in it.
Photograph credit: GiardinieraSpicy by Antonio Cavallo · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
What Goes With It
- Charcuterie
- Bollito misto
- A cold beer
How to Cook Giardiniera
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Sterilise two 1-litre jars with boiling water and let them dry.
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Bring the vinegar, water, salt and sugar to the boil in a large pan.
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Blanch the vegetables in turn, lifting each out with a slotted spoon: carrots 3 minutes, cauliflower and onions 2 minutes, peppers 90 seconds, celery 90 seconds.
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Spread everything on a clean tea towel and leave to dry completely. Any water on them will shorten the keeping time.
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Pack the vegetables into the jars with the garlic, chillies, peppercorns and oregano.
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Pour in olive oil until everything is submerged, tapping the jars to release trapped air.
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Seal and leave in the fridge for at least a week before opening.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Notes From the Method
Blanch each vegetable for its own time.
In vinegar, not water — that is what preserves them.
Dry them completely before they go in the jar.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
- Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
Storing and Reheating
Keep it in the fridge from the day it is made, with every piece under the oil. Garlic and vegetables kept in oil can carry botulism, which cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, and no keeping time has been tested for this home preserve, so make small batches and never keep it at room temperature.
Giardiniera: Your Questions Answered
How long does Giardiniera take to make?
30 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 1 week of pickling for a week, so allow 1 week from start to finish. The recipe serves 12.
What's in a Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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