Rodney Getchell, owner of the quaint Little Rock, Arkansas grocer Hestands in the Heights, cocked his head when I asked what chow chow was. “You never had chow chow?” he said, and with a quick wave he led me, like a vet leading a malnourished calf toward recovery, to an aisle crammed with condiments.
Spared the fate of compost, more complex than an okra pickle, the cabbage-based relish that sounds like a dog is the fruit of agrarian resourcefulness. As the popular Dixieland brand’s label lists, chow consists largely of cabbage and onion, sugar and vinegar, but there are as many versions as there are covers of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”. Born in the days when most folks kept gardens, the relish arose as a way to preserve the leftover harvest while stocking winter pantries. Markets were farther then, money tight, so people grew their own food, producing homemade jellies, cane syrup, pecans, canned peaches. After a bounteous summer, people gathered their remaining vegetables in anticipation of first frost, which would kill the peppers and tomatoes, and, to avoid spoilage, chopped them up, added vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic, and pickling spice, and boiled down the mix. So while most chow chows historically contained some combination of cabbage, onion and tomato, the range of ingredients included carrots, cauliflower, lima beans, corn, peppers, cucumbers, okra, even apples, whatever was in the ground―or in excess―when fall approached.
