10 Italian Appetizers To Kick Off Your Feast

Welcome to Italian-American Week, when we're taking a bit of a break from our usual stories to focus on the important stuff: red sauce, stuffed pasta, porchetta and the chefs and home cooks making it all happen.

Italian meals are a big, epic, multi-course thing. This means you're going to need appetizers, and we don't mean something on a cracker. Dig into cured meats, fried rice balls, stuffed peppers, hearty eggplant and other things that go perfectly on that red-checkered tablecloth before all the pasta, meat and dessert. It's time for antipasti.

More from Italian-American Week on Food Republic:

• 12 Stuffed Pastas To Know And Cook
• Jon and Vinny Open An Italian-American Restaurant
• The One And Only Zeppole Recipe