Thanksgiving usually isn’t a place for culinary revelation—star anise in the cranberry sauce is often as good as it gets—but a recent Thanksgiving dinner with a Haitian friend changed my fridge forever. On the table was a repurposed mayonnaise jar filled what looked like coleslaw covered in vinegar (and spiked with more Scotch bonnet peppers than I was comfortable with). "It's pikliz," my friend told me. And it's a staple of every Haitian table.

A kind of slaw/kimchi/Tabasco hybrid, pikliz gave much-needed lift to the meal’s relentless richness, and I found myself sprinkling the bracingly tart and fiery pickling liquid on everything: turkey, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole. And the slaw itself? A perfect, bracing side dish.

“Pikliz represents the finishing touch of any Haitian dish,” says Marie Dennery, a Haitian-born home health aide on Long Island known among friends for her particularly piquant pikliz. “It's big in Haitian cuisine because of how cheap and easily attainable the ingredients are. Something about the liquid, carrots and cabbage just enhances the flavor of anything: fish, meat, soup, rice.”

Think of pikliz less as coleslaw and more as pickled peppers. “A good pikliz is about the liquid that holds everything together and how spicy it is,” says Dennery. “You have to use Scotch bonnet peppers. They provide the best flavor and heat. “

Pikliz makes sense in Haiti, a country with a remarkably complex cuisine but natural resources crippled by deforestation, soil erosion, and natural disasters. But this wallet-friendly, shelf-stable condiment deserves a place on tables everywhere. Use it any place you would use vinegar, coleslaw, or salsa: on roasted or grilled meats and fish, fried chicken, fish & chips, burgers, rice and beans, roasted root vegetables, creamy soups, fritters and patties of any kind, or as the base for a salad dressing. It’s a natural with tacos or pulled-pork sandwiches. And as good as it was on Thanksgiving, what I'm really waiting for is to serve it alongside Easter ham.