Pikliz

This Haitian condiment will supercharge your summer

I first learned about pikliz (peek-leez) during my brief pre-covid stint as a podcaster. One of my guests was Haitian, so I read up on Haitian food ahead of our conversation. Pikliz jumped out at me, because it sounded like an even better version of the condiment I had fallen in love with in Belize years before: thinly shredded onion and habanero in white vinegar, forked generously over bowls of rice and red beans cooked in coconut milk.

I made a batch immediately, and it became one of my ride or die pickles—one of the few I make that isn’t fermented. This magical dish manages to find a seemingly impossible sweet spot between cole slaw, pickles, relish, hot sauce, and salad. It’s fabulous, especially with something a bit stodgy (like rice & beans), fatty (like any sort of fried or grilled meat) or boring (far too many things). It can be pleasingly warm, or blazingly spicy, or somewhere in between depending on how many hot peppers you add.

While it improves dramatically over the course of a day or two it’s wicked right out of the gate—especially using this one weird trick I borrowed from Japanese quick-picking traditions. So there’s none of the delayed gratification that fermented pickles require. It’s hard to imagine anything that you’ll be grilling this summer that will not be markedly improved by a liberal application of crunchy, tangy, complex, and hot-as-balls pikliz. And best of all it’s very easy to make.