For the Most Flavorful Italian Spaghetti Sauce, I Always Add 2 Tablespoons of This to the Pot

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Over the years, I’ve cooked hundreds of classic pasta dishes in a professional setting, but when I cook for myself, I cook pasta intuitively. My time in the kitchen is when I can get a little freaky, to use whatever ingredients I have on hand — anchovies, Calabrian chile peppers, capers, fish sauce, fresh herbs, butter, sardines, breadcrumbs — the list goes on and on. There are dozens of ingredients that can enhance your pasta sauce at home, but there’s one in particular that I keep going back to over and over again. I make sure I have a jar of it at all times: pickled hot cherry peppers.

You’ve probably seen hot cherry peppers on an antipasto platter or behind the case at an Italian deli, usually stuffed with prosciutto or Parmesan and submerged in oil. Cherry pepper poppers are a legendary appetizer, something whose intensely fatty, vinegary, spicy taste I find myself craving often.

These are not peppadew peppers or even pimentos; these are hot cherry peppers with a Scoville unit reading usually between 2,500 and 5,000. The peppers are spicy but also slightly sweet. What makes them really sing, however, is their lovely tartness when pickled. Though you won’t usually find them fresh, you can buy jars of hot cherry peppers submerged in a vinegary brine. These peppers carry a big-time flavor, which makes them perfect for adding spicy tang to pasta dishes like arrabbiata.

• Chop them carefully. Slice off the stems, then gently chop the whole cherry peppers. Be careful: The plump peppers will burst with juice if you go in too hard.
• Use all the seeds! Don’t be afraid of them; they’re pickled and not as spicy as you think.
• Don’t forget the juice. I like to add an extra tablespoon or two of the pickling juice, which is sweet and tangy, to the pasta sauce as it cooks. Add the juice to your cooked mixture of garlic, oil, and cherry peppers, then cook the juice off for a minute or two before adding tomatoes.
• Hot cherry peppers can be hard to find, so look to your local Italian deli or grocery store for jars of pickled hot cherry peppers. Brands like Cento and DeLallo are the most common.