Pickles Redux
With food prices so high, I am remembering an old trick my mother used to feed her brood of eight in the fifties:
Pickle juice can be reused to make refrigerator pickles right in the same jar. Sometimes my mom would simply put carrot sticks, for example, in the pickle juice and let it sit a few days in the fridge.
I sometimes put the leftover pickle juice in a saucepan and add veggies (carrot sticks or minis, green beans, zucchini or cucumber slices, onion slices and so on) and possibly herbs and maybe vinegar or water. Bring just to a boil and then put back in the same jar (which has been heated up with some real hot water so it won't break). Then back in the fridge. Tastes better after a day or so.
Everyone appreciates the cold crunch of pickles on a hot day. And it's a good way to get veggies into the kids. We are now working on a jar of mini carrots which went into some bread-and-butter pickle juice along with the tough stalks of my dill which I needed to cut back. It's quite good.
Other ideas for pickle juice?
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6 Comments:
Popsicles?
aungeinphx at 4:46PM on 06/11/08
Chicken salad... deviled eggs.. .there is likely some blogger who has a whole site, not mine mind you, that is dealing with this. Those are two recipes that my southern relatives use pickle juice in.
I'm absolutely with you on reusing pickle juice. Even my homemade pickles of various kings get at least two uses out of the brine, so long as I move through them fairly quickly.
Husband at 5:19PM on 06/11/08
@aungeinphx: You're funny. :-)
@Husband: I didn't say it very well but I was thinking of new suggestions of what to pickle in the reused pickle brine.
No, I definitely don't want to do a "semi-homemade" deal like pickle juice mixed with supermarket angel food cake or canned ravioli! Sorry if I wrote this too close to dinner time.
Blue Iris at 5:36PM on 06/11/08
Cauliflower! I love pickled cauliflower.
Cold sliced pork loin. Warm the brine and the meat (or use freshly cooked) with some allspice and whole coriander. Put all in the jar warm and let sit for a day or more. Serve cold over salad or as a sandwich. My gramma did that with sweet pickle brine and it was really good. Bet it would be good in the dill pickle brine with some extra fresh dill and garlic too.
Peppers are good in it too. My DH (who only recently started to appreciate pickles) likes to soak his homegrown hot peppers in the brine now, then use them in burritos/salads/salsa etc. Gives a neat flavor. I bet if you don't prefer hot peppers, then banana peppers or red sweet ones would be good too.
sadiepix at 6:03PM on 06/11/08
No joke about the popsicles! Check out Bob's Pickle Pops.
CookiePie at 4:07PM on 06/12/08
Holy crap. Re-using pickle brine. That's genius. Why didn't I think of that?
BangieB at 5:36PM on 06/14/08