10 Ways to Use Pickle Juice

The easiest way to use pickle juice is to remember its original purpose: brining. This means you can add other vegetables to it for instant quick pickles. Simply drop raw veggies into the same container of brine, making sure they’re submerged, then cover and refrigerate. Of course, you can do cucumber spears but this method also works great on the usual pickling suspects: carrot sticks, radishes, cauliflower florets, chiles, okra, sliced onion, and green beans (hello, dilly beans!). You can keep these new pickles up to one week but we found that more delicate vegetables are best after a day or two.

A pickle juice chaser comes with a shot of whiskey in a pickleback but this cocktail chameleon can adapt to almost any libation. Replace olive brine with pickle juice for an epic dirty martini. (You can make it with vodka but we find that gin is a stellar match for the dill in most pickle jars.) Pickle juice gives a new thrill to savory classics, like a Bloody Mary or michelada. Instead of rimming your margarita with salt, add pickle juice to get that salinity with extra flavor benefits. Slip a slug of the brine into a combo of prosecco and dry vermouth over ice for a delightful pickle spritz.

Non-imbibers can also get their gherkin on: Take a cue from Popeyes' pickle menu and stir the brine into lemonade for a sweet-savory refresher. You can also hop on a couple of viral trends and recreate Dua Lipa’s Diet Coke with pickled jalapeños and pickle juice or make a copycat version of Sonic’s Dr. Pepper Pucker by spiking the soda with pickles, brine or both.

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Using pickle juice to marinate chicken, turkey, seafood and other lean proteins is essentially just better brining. It’s a quick way to tenderize poultry and pork while seasoning them through and through. Just be careful not to let them sit too long in the marinade: up to 30 minutes for seafood; at least one hour, up to 24 hours for poultry and pork.

You can also marinate tofu and vegetables in pickle juice to supercharge them with flavor, though it won’t necessarily make them more tender. A similar caveat for marinating time: at least 30 minutes, up to 24 hours for these plant-based ingredients.

Punchy and wonderfully tangy, let pickle juice stand-in for the acid in vinaigrettes and dressings and you have an understudy that surpasses the star. Lean into the herbiness of dill pickle juice in dressings like ranch or green goddess. Try bread and butter pickle juice in sweeter dressings, like honey mustard and Thousand Island.

The next time you make potato salad, “pickle-wash” those spuds. Simply pour pickle juice over your drained boiled potatoes so they soak up all that delicious flavor. Then you can add even more brine to the dressing and fold chopped pickles into the potato salad. Try this same method with pasta for pasta salad and eggs for egg salad to win the cookout.

Sauces that already have briny ingredients are a natural for adding pickle juice. Think tartar sauce (BFF to fish and chips), remoulade and the “special sauce” spread on burgers.

Add a splash to soups or stews for a briny kick that'll make guests sit up and ask, "Ooh, what is that?" It perks up classics like matzo ball, hot and sour, gazpacho and beef and barley stew.

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Add pickle juice to simmering water to blanch vegetables for extra zing. It's fantastic with green beans, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower or zucchini.

Stir pickle juice into cooking water for rice and other grains for a bold, tangy flavor that's never boring.

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Add pickle juice to the water for steaming vegetables, such as carrots, asparagus or green beans. It can also infuse seafood like shrimp or fish with a welcome brininess.

There are so many tasty ways to use pickle juice so don't ever let it go to waste again!