Gwynedd Stuart
It’s Uncle Sam(wich) week here at Sporked! All week long, we’re celebrating Independence Day by highlighting the best regional sandwiches and all the ingredients you need to make them at home. For more tasty sandwich fixins, see the full collection of rankings, product recommendations, and more.
The best giardiniera is oily, savory, and bursting with pickled veggies. If you’ve ever had a Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich, you know the deal. Heaped atop an authentic Italian beef, giardiniera should cut the richness of the sliced chuck roast and au jus gravy (I’ll take mine fully dunked, please!), adding an irresistible pop of brightness and crunch. I lived in Chicago for several years around a decade ago and got absolutely hooked on giardiniera. It’s a pretty standard sandwich condiment around those parts—even Subway sandwich shops in the Chicagoland area have giardiniera as an option!
If you’re not familiar, giardiniera is an Italian antipasto that consists of a garden’s worth of pickled vegetables (giardiniera means “from the garden” in Italian). Ingredients can vary, but you’ll usually find peppers, olives, carrots, and cauliflower all in one jar with either water or oil (although oil is much tastier). If you’re looking for the best Chicago giardiniera—the kind for authentic Italian beef sandwiches—you’re looking for the best hot giardiniera, and we can help. We set out to find the best giardiniera for Italian beef sandwiches at home, and we went straight to a Windy City icon (via the internet) to get the goods.
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- J.P. Graziano Hot Giardiniera
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J.P. Graziano is an Italian market and deli in Chicago’s West Loop, and the giardiniera they put on their sandwiches would be worth a trip to the Midwest. But don’t book a ticket quite yet. You can order their giardiniera online in three heat levels: mild, mezzo, and hot. Their hot giardiniera was by far the best giardiniera we tried in this mini taste test. It is hot. Very hot. A serious, simmering heat infuses every single component: serrano peppers, red peppers, green olives, crunchy carrots, and itty-bitty cauliflower florets. All of the pickled veggies are very salty, but totally irresistible. And even though I’m pretty sensitive to super-spicy foods, I couldn’t stop eating this (and subsequently complaining to my coworkers that my mouth was on fire—the flavor is worth the pain).
This giardiniera has a lot of strong qualities, but I was especially obsessed with the oil in this jar. It’s just vegetable oil, but you’d swear it was something more nuanced, like olive oil. The depth of flavor is unreal—the combo of the veggies and the oil is umami and almost cheesy. It’s a real feat.
I’ll be honest: I’d take a few more carrots and some more cauliflower in this jar of giardiniera, but the flavor made up for any misgivings I may have had. Yes, this is the best giardiniera for Italian beef, but it’ll make a damn good sandwich all on its own. Piled on a hoagie roll with a smear of mayo and maybe a couple slices of provolone? Sandwich heaven, even for vegetarians.
Best of the Best
Other products we tried: Vienna Hot Giardiniera, Mezzetta Italian Mix Mild Giardiniera, J.P. Graziano Mezzo Giardiniera, J.P. Graziano Mild Giardiniera
Jordan Myrick
