Whether it’s genius cooking tips from her TikTok account or her unusual breakfast combinations, Italian-American chef Giada De Laurentiis is always keeping us on our toes in the kitchen in the best way possible. De Laurentiis is beloved for small tips and tricks to make home cooking easy and delicious, like making lasagna in a sheet pan instead of a casserole dish or adding carrots to tomato sauce to balance the acidity. On her website, Giadzy, the recipe for her namesake sandwich, the Giada, includes a fun addition to fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced imported mortadella, and basil pesto on a ficelle, which is essentially a very skinny baguette. The final ingredient may surprise you, but it’s one we wholeheartedly endorse: fried capers. The capers, which are actually pickled and preserved flower buds of a caper bush, bring a salty spike of flavor to a sandwich with otherwise mellow ingredients.
Similar to adding potato chips on a sandwich for texture and saltiness, fried capers bring a crunchy, briny layer. While we don’t recommend them on your next peanut butter and jelly sandwich, of course, fried capers can easily find a home in most deli meat-based sandwiches. Not just for omnivore-leaning sandwiches, fried capers would be an excellent addition to a caprese sandwich, creating a sharp contrast with the sweet, creamy mozzarella and fresh herbal notes of the tomatoes, or a welcome punch of salinity when added to a sandwich filled with grilled, marinated vegetables or even breaded and fried zucchini.
Fried capers are an improvement to almost any savory dish
Frying capers takes cooking to the next level, and they can be swapped for plain capers in almost any application you can think of. Just add them on top rather than mixing them into something if the recipe calls for that. The fried flower buds are also an excellent addition to charcuterie boards, as well as a perfect topping for a wealth of dishes. Most recipes that include capers, especially where capers are mixed into a sauce, could benefit from a sprinkling of fried capers to finish. One thing we don’t recommend, though, is stirring them into a liquid or sauce, as the crispness from frying will quickly deteriorate.
If frying the small, briny spheres on the stovetop feels intimidating, you can fry capers in the microwave for less mess and risk of hot oil splatters. Or you can fry them in an air fryer for a crispy, crunchy snack, as fried capers are also delicious on their own. The oil that you’ve fried the capers in can be saved. Just let it cool completely before straining it into an air-tight container and storing it in the refrigerator for future caper-infused salad dressings or a way to add a bit more flavor to roasted vegetables.
