Finish Off With a Splash of Pickle Juice
The ability to prepare a meal is what separates great home cooks from just good cooks. This extra attention to detail not only makes your food taste better, it also makes it more thoughtful and finished. If your food is a sentence, the finishing touches are a period or an exclamation mark. Lemon (or lime) pomace is a common finishing touch, but brine can be used for similar, albeit saltier, effects.
Lemon juice and brine are obviously very different. A brine “juice” is, first of all, a brine with a variety of ingredients, including (but not limited to) salt, sugar, and spices. But the brine also contains acid, either acetic acid from the addition of vinegar or lactic acid from fermentation .
Like the (citric) acid in lemon juice, any acid in pickle juice can add a punch to your dish, helping cut through fatty, rich flavors and textures to balance. Unlike lemon juice, pickles also contain salt, herbs, and other seasonings, as well as a bit of whimsicality.
Mayonnaise picnic and deli salads like potatoes, pasta, chicken, and tuna all benefit from a splash of sour herb brine, but they’re all pretty obvious pairings. You can use the brine the same way you would freshly squeezed lemon juice and just sprinkle it on your food. Grilled vegetables like zucchini, asparagus, mushrooms, and cucumbers get a bit of savory brilliance, as do many meats (such as mayonnaise-marinated chicken breast).
You can also take a break from pickles and explore the whole pickle rainbow . Toss fried shrimp with pickled onion brine, drizzle sausages with pickled beetroot brine, or pour some pickled cauliflower brine into a creamy sauce.
However, my favorite is to sprinkle the brine into a large bowl of rice. Brine rice can be made with a brine of classic dill pickles, lacto-fermented pickles, pickled onions, pickled beets, or any other pickled vegetables you have in your pantry or refrigerator. The brine adds a lot of flavor and a bit of acidity, making it the perfect base for a plate of grilled meats and vegetables or something even simpler like fried eggs . (Add chopped pickled vegetables for an extra kick – fermented foods are great for your gut.)