This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.
The arrival of summer means the advent of cookout season (hooray!), but gatherings around the grill too often come with an unwelcome guest: dry meat. Even the most skilled grill masters can slip up and find themselves turning out a chewy barbecue chicken breast or a desiccated rack of ribs (boooo). But listen, what if I told you there was a way to basically guarantee juicy meat, while also using up something already in your fridge that you’d otherwise toss out? I’ve got a secret weapon for rescuing us from the dryness pickle, and it depends on, well, pickles.
If you cook a lot of meat in any season, you may already know that brining—the practice of steeping a protein in salted water for a period of time before cooking—is the best way of ensuring that those cuts prone to drying out (like chicken breasts; pork chops, ribs, or tenderloins; or turkey legs) instead stay moist and flavorful. If you’re not familiar, Food52 has a great explainer on the science, but the gist of what’s happening is that, while your meat sits in the solution (which can also include sugar and spices), the tissue absorbs water and salt, resulting in a superior texture and taste once it hits the heat.
The trouble with brining the traditional way is that it’s an extra step that’s easy to forget; depending on the size of your protein, you need to do it a few hours ahead up to overnight (hello, Thanksgiving turkey!). And if you do manage to think about it, the rigamarole of mixing up the brine itself—how many tablespoons of salt per cup of water, again? Oh no, my brown sugar is bricked!—can be just annoying enough to keep you from bothering.
This is where the pickles come in—or more accurately, their brine. Look in your fridge, just as I did one fateful afternoon. You almost certainly have a jar of pickles, either the standard cucumber sort or more adventurous preparations, and I bet it’s almost empty … of the pickles anyway. But aha, that juice! There’s so much of it just sitting there! It turns out that the pickling liquid that you were soon going to pour down the drain before chucking the jar in the recycling bin is a perfect brine for meat—inherently salty and a little sweet, probably with some garlic or other interesting spice components as well. And all you have to do is transfer it with your protein to a freezer bag or bowl (through a strainer, ideally, to remove any flotsam), and let physics do its thing. And hey, if you have to munch on a few cukes to finish out the jar, there’s your appetizer!
Now, before you say, “Ew, I don’t want my pork chop to taste like pickles” and disappear me, along with this tab, into oblivion, know this: It will not! The surprising and, dare I say, magical thing about this technique is that you get all the benefits of a traditional brine without any overt pickled flavor—maybe a little extra savory funkiness in the background, but nothing approaching “pickled pork.” I’m confident on this point, because I’ve pickle-brined drawing on all manner of sources, from regular pickles and giardiniera, to banana peppers, cocktail onions, and even kimchi, often mixing two or three together like a salt-crazed mad scientist. If the concoction I’m using is extremely piquant, I might thin it a bit with water; conversely, if it could use a little salt, I add a pinch or two, or plan to sprinkle a bit on the paper towel–dried meat before cooking. But in any case, I’m telling you, I have never found the results anything but delicious.
So, if you’re thinking about firing up the grill tonight, but you have neglected your brine, don’t frown! Check the fridge and see what pickly things you have to work with. A paragon of resourcefulness and thrift, you are just hours away from that first, now far tastier, bite—a mouthful that’s sure to turn that pucker into a smile.
