Pickle Brine Chicken – I Need to Give You Props

The chicken breasts seen herein started off as nothing more than a couple of props for our recently posted “How to Make a Brick Grill” video, but they came out so well, I decided to show you what I think is a pretty neat trick.

And let’s face it; there aren’t a lot of great uses for leftover pickle juice. I did hear recently that some people like to drink this stuff after jogging, which I found to be quite shocking, since I had no idea people still jogged.  

As you’ll see, I only let mine brine for about 2 hours which seemed to be enough. I’ve heard that you really only need about one hour per inch thickness of meat, and that rule of thumb seems to work for me. These breasts were tender, juicy, and flavorful.

Speaking of flavor, you can probably just go with the straight pickle juice as a brine, but I hedged my bets with a little extra salt, sugar, and pepper. Like most brined recipes, the payoff is in the texture and moisture content, and not necessarily in the taste, but having said that, these did have a nice little twang.

So, the next time you have nothing left in the pickle jar but the juice, you now know what to do, and I don’t mean take up jogging. I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 2 breasts:

2 large boneless skinless chicken breast

olive oil to coat

salt and pepper to taste

For the brine:

1 tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

pinch of cayenne

1 1/2 to 2 cups dill pickle juice