Chow-Chow

Chow-chow — a sweet-and-sour pickled vegetable relish made from the end-of-garden surplus (green tomatoes, cabbage, onion, bell pepper, and whatever else the garden produced in excess) — is the Appalachian answer to what every gardener faces in September: too many vegetables and not enough people to eat them fresh. The relish is chopped, brined, cooked briefly with sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, celery seed, and turmeric, and canned in jars for year-round use. Every Appalachian family's chow-chow recipe is different because every garden's surplus is different — the relish is a document of what grew that year. The name likely derives from the Chinese-English pidgin *chow-chow* (mixed), possibly introduced through Chinese railroad workers or through colonial trade routes.

A chunky, colourful relish of chopped green tomato, cabbage, onion, and bell pepper (green and red) in a sweet-sour mustard-vinegar brine with visible mustard seed, celery seed, and a yellow tinge from turmeric. The texture should be crisp — the vegetables should still have bite despite the cooking and the brine. The flavour should be sweet, tart, and mustardy simultaneously, with enough heat from the mustard to register but not enough to call it spicy.

Alongside beans, cornbread, fried potatoes, collard greens — anywhere a sweet-sour, crunchy condiment improves a simple, hearty meal. Chow-chow is the Appalachian table condiment the way hot sauce is the Louisiana table condiment and pickled peppers are the Southern table condiment.