Unlike caramelized onions, these really are ready in 30 minutes. They’re also one of the Best Recipes You’ve Never Heard of, an ever-expanding collection of lesser-known dishes from Chris Kimball’s travels.
Red wine vinegar puts the “aggro” in agrodolce
Agrodolce—Italian for “sweet and sour”—is a category of Italian condiments made by simmering dried fruits, vegetables and/or nuts in a mixture of vinegar (the agro) and sugar or honey (the dolce). The vinegar is what gives the condiment its aggressive edge, balancing the sweetness of the sugars, both added and naturally occurring.
It’s also what makes cipolline agrodolce a better sandwich topper than caramelized onions, especially if that sandwich is meaty, cheesy or otherwise rich and salty. As we learned from Dr. Arielle Johnson, acids balance sweet and bitter flavors, but they also cut through fat and cause your mouth to salivate, creating “this kind of juicy or more dynamic eating experience.” Caramelized onions could never.
These onions keep it crisp
While cipolline agrodolce typically are made with whole, small onions, we take our cues from Ristorante Barbieri in Calabria and fashion ours into slices. Tropea onions are a specialty of the region, but hard to source in the States, so we apply their technique to standard supermarket red onions. Properly caramelizing onions requires cooking off most of their water, collapsing their cellular walls and rendering them almost mushy. Here, the slices are cooked briefly—just about 15 minutes—to soften them slightly.
Rather than a glob of jammy sweetness, you get a tangle of tangy slices that retain some of their fresh texture. This provides toothsome contrast so your sandwich doesn’t become a heap of soft-on-soft textures.
What to eat with cipolline agrodolce
Cipolline agrodolce live somewhere between a pickle and a chutney, which makes them well suited to almost anything. My favorite use, so far, has been piling them on a breakfast sandwich with a fried egg, salty ham and melted cheese, but they make a great addition to a cheeseburger, roasted chicken, grilled lamb, scrambled eggs, or any pizza.
They also round out a snack plate better than they have any right to, straddling the line between sweet and sour, balancing cured meats and aged cheeses with ease. When in doubt, don’t overthink it: Mix them into some sour cream or labneh to make a quick dip and serve with your finest potato chips.
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