14 Smart Ways To Use Up Leftover Olive Brine

If you're anything like us, you'll have a lot of leftover olive brine lying around. At any given time we have three or four different jars of olives in our fridge, and a surplus of the briny juice that they come packed in. This brine is of course designed to preserve your olives, but it's difficult to see beyond that sole use at its culinary potential. Instead, what usually happens is that olive brine gets poured down the sink when the last olive has been munched on, and is never thought of again.

However, we implore you not to throw it out. This brine can be used for way more than just keeping your olives fresh. With its simple combination of salt, vinegar, and water, olive brine can give countless foods a hit of acidity, salinity, and moisture — and the extra flavor it gets from the olives provides a hit of umami to loads of different dishes. Both liquid and solid food items can benefit from olive brine, with everything from soups and salad dressings to bread and butter made more tasty with just a dash or two. Put your brine to work with these top tips.

If you want a flavorful salad dressing, you need one key add-in: Olive brine. The problem with a lot of salad dressings is that they lack any proper depth, and instead are a fairly surface-level combination of acidity and fattiness. Adding olive brine is one of the quickest ways to make them taste way more well-rounded. Olive brine gives salad dressing a savoriness and an intensity that allows it to stand out in your salad, instead of fading into the background. Plus, it accentuates any other ingredients that you're adding into your dressing, like garlic, which gains an extra weightiness from the brine.

Olive brine is a particularly good addition to vinaigrettes for folks following plant-based diets, and an excellent substitute for anchovies in Caesar salad dressings. Although it tends to work best in simpler combinations of oil and vinegar, it can also add freshness to heavier salad dressings. When adding olive brine to a salad dressing, though, you just need to consider what else is going into it. If you've already added a bunch of salt or other sodium-rich ingredients, the brine may tip things over the edge. You may need to pair back on other seasonings to stop your dressing from becoming too intense.

How often have you found that your marinated meats are lacking in flavor? Probably more than you think. Marinades can often be slightly underpowered, not imparting as much taste as you'd like them to. Plus, they can occasionally lack the ability to permeate the meat with flavor that you require, leaving your pork, beef, or chicken with surface-level taste but with no depth.

Your solution lies in olive brine, which you should stop throwing out and start throwing into your marinade. Olive brine's composition and combination of vinegar and salt gives it the ability to both penetrate your meat and slightly soften its protein structures, while also giving it excellent flavor. The salt in the brine lifts all the other ingredients in your marinade, and both the salt and the vinegar balances out any sweeter notes. Plus, olive brine provides a much-needed source of moisture, which is essential for allowing your meat to bathe in the combo of flavors you're creating. Just make sure you're thinking about complementary flavors with your olive brine: You'll generally want tastes that align with a more Mediterranean feel, instead of ones from food cultures that don't use olives at all.

Marinara sauces are often missing something that makes them pop — and in our opinion, that thing is olive brine. More specifically, olive brine provides three of the flavor notes that marinara sauce really benefits from. The first is umami, which seeps into the brine from the olives themselves, and which gives marinara way more heft. The second is acidity, which can deliver brightness to the sauce, and the third is saltiness, which seasons it and brings everything together.

When making marinara sauce with olive brine, it's vital to think about how to add contrast elsewhere. For example, you may need to add some sugar to your marinara to offset the intensity of the olive brine, which can overwhelm things slightly if you're not careful. You should also avoid adding too much brine to begin with, as even a bit too much can make your sauce taste a bit too, well, olive-y. Begin by pouring in just a little bit, and then do a taste test. You can always add more, but it's trickier to take it away.

We bet you never thought that homemade hummus needed a dash of olive brine. However, you'd be wrong. Hummus is improved to no end by this miracle ingredient, which gives it a lot more body than you'd think. The issue with homemade hummus is it can sometimes be lacking in intensity, ending up as a fairly tasteless mulch of chickpeas and lemon juice. Olive brine gives it a bit more punch and an all-important dose of savoriness. This savory note fills it out considerably — and makes it way tastier.

As well as this, olive brine can thin out a chunky hummus without diluting its flavor. You can go a bit too far with this, though. If you're not careful and add too much olive brine, your hummus will end up tasting more like a tapenade. This might not be the worst thing in the world, but given that it's a hummus, you'll want the chickpeas to stand out. Begin by adding a tablespoon of olive brine at a time and tasting along the way.

Everyone knows that pan sauces are the secret to a good meal (as long as you avoid those nonstick skillets). A good pan sauce lifts all of the flavor from the bottom of your skillet and places it directly onto your food, giving it an intensity that it would otherwise lack. However, one of the big problems with pan sauces is that they require liquid, and all too often people use water as a deglazing agent, leading to a diluted flavor. Alternatively, they go for wine, which can give a sauce richness and body — but which may not be ideal for folks who don't drink.

Our solution is to use olive brine. Olive brine has a powerful, robust flavor, and deglazes your pan without taking away from your sauce's intensity. It instead kicks things up a notch, and adds an important acidic note which gives pan sauces a lovely brightness. You may want to cut your olive brine with some water or a liquid that's a bit less salty, as it can sometimes overwhelm the other tastes going on. Make sure you include a fair amount, though.

Sautéed greens benefit hugely from olives. Olives can give your greens a whack of umami and brininess, creating a vegetal complexity and seasoning them in the process. However, what if you don't want to add olives to your greens? What if you want to keep your texture simple, but still want all of that flavor?

We think you can guess where we're going with this, guys. That's right: Use olive brine. Adding a dash of brine to your sautéed greens can give them a lot more taste and help them wilt without watering them down. The combo of salt and vinegar seasons them effectively without taking away from their inherent flavor, and everything gets a little boost of savoriness.

Virtually all types of greens work with olive brine. It's especially good with heavier, slightly tougher greens, as the bold flavor helps to take away some of their bitterness. It's just as good with lighter greens, though, and works particularly well with spinach. There's something about the combo of brininess and the grassy flavor of spinach leaves that really hits the spot.

Olive brine in a Bloody Mary isn't new — but if you haven't tried it yet, you're really missing out. Olive brine gives Bloody Marys so much more heft, and turns them from what can be a pretty one-note drink into something complex and rich. The brine both seasons the tomato juice with salt and vinegar, and also gives it an umami kick that provides a meatiness to the drink. You want your Bloody Mary to taste full-bodied, and this is the best way to get there. Plus, you don't even need that much of it: A tablespoon or two will usually be enough.

If you don't have any olive brine, you can use an alternative brine instead. Caper brine is an awesome substitute as it has the same punch that olive brine does, but with a slightly more floral note. Pickle brine will also have the same effect, although it will have slightly less of the savoriness that olive juice provides. Don't forget that olive brine is just the start of the add-ins, too. Hot sauce, horseradish, a pinch of mustard powder, and a scrunch of black pepper can make your Bloody Mary into an incredibly complex drink.

While the difference between mayonnaise and aioli is the fact that the latter contains garlic, there can be a few other distinctions between them. Aioli can sometimes be slightly less balanced than mayo, with the garlic notes pushing it into floral territory and giving it a pungent note that overpowers everything else. It benefits from a little bit more acidity to pull these tastes back — and olive brine can be the best option for this.

Olive brine gives a pop of vinegar to your aioli, but it also provides a saltiness that helps to season it. Additionally, it provides your aioli with a burst of umami that helps to round it out even more. This umami gives the aioli depth, stopping the garlic from being an overbearing, slightly shallow top note that gets in the way of everything else. We'd recommend using kalamata olive brine for your aioli, as it has a meatiness that works well with the other sharper flavors. In truth, though, almost every type of olive brine will improve your sauce.

The problem with coleslaw is that it can be way too sharp. This chopped salad tends to rely on bright, light acids like lemon juice and white vinegar to deliver its all-important acidity, but these ingredients can lack nuance. Instead, they hit your coleslaw with an intensity that makes it refreshing, but hard to have more than a few bites of without reaching for a glass of water.

Ingredients that give coleslaw a savory undertone can help to balance this out, and olive brine can be an awesome substitute for your regular vinegar or lemon juice. It has the acidity your coleslaw needs, but also a savoriness that gives your slaw way more bite. The ever-so-slight muskiness of olive brine also gives coleslaw a more pleasing fragrance. Plus, olive brine lets you skip the addition of salt, as it's got plenty of sodium in it already. Just ensure that you're balancing your olive brine out with a little extra sugar, as its savory notes can ruin that sweet-and-sour effect you're going for here.

Does your soup taste just a little flat? If it does, we've got an easy fix for you: Olive brine. Olive brine can give a real boost of flavor to homemade soup with just a flick of the wrist. This ingredient gives soups acidity, salt, and savoriness in one fell swoop. It's especially useful for meatless soups that can sometimes end up lacking in any umami, or fish soups that may have a lot of salinity but not a lot of nuance.

You can add olive brine to most soups, with both creamy and lighter broths benefiting from it. It's particularly good in Mediterranean-themed soups, as the brine's natural flavor profile will pair with the other ingredients seamlessly. However, when adding olive brine to soup, it's useful to err on the side of caution. A dash or two can be helpful and provide some much-needed flavor, but if you pour in too much it'll start to make your soup too vinegary — and it'll just taste like olives. It's also important to bear in mind that if you're adding bouillon cubes or loads of salt to your soup, the brine can tip things over the edge into unpleasantly salty territory.

Your brine is key to giving your pickled vegetables flavor, and one of the reasons you'll likely regret draining your canned olives is because its brine can be reused in your pickling journey. Olive brine can be used to pickle any other vegetables you have lying around, imbuing them with a savory flavor. The brine's preservative qualities can be re-employed to pickle your cucumbers, carrots, or onions, often making them way more exciting.

If you're reusing olive brine to pickle other vegetables, it's useful to think about your container. You can repurpose your old olive jar to pickle your veggies, but it's important to wash it thoroughly to get rid of any imperfections before you begin the pickling process. Additionally, bear in mind that if you're draining your olive brine to pickle other vegetables but you still haven't finished your olives, then you're exposing them to oxygen and potentially limiting their shelf life. We'd wait until your olives are completely finished before using that olive brine elsewhere.

If you haven't tried olive bread, you haven't lived. Olive bread's combination of soft, pillowy dough and savory, intense olive flavors is an explosion of taste and texture: With a slick of butter or a drizzle of olive oil, you'll be in culinary heaven. However, if you've made olive bread before, you may be familiar with the fact that if your bite is missing any olive flesh, it can be lacking in flavor. The solution? Add some olive brine to your dough mixture, and give your bread savoriness and saltiness in every mouthful.

It's vital not to add too much brine, as this can make your dough too soft and sticky and potentially affect how well it bakes. For every three cups of flour, you'll need about a quarter cup of olive brine (and 1.25 cups of water). Make sure you mix the water with the olive juice well before adding it to the dry ingredients, as otherwise the dough can have an unbalanced flavor. It can be a good idea to dust your olives themselves with flour before mixing them into your dough, too, so that they don't sink to the bottom as it bakes.

If you want a touch of luxury, compound butter's the way to go. The concept of compound butter is simple: You just mix extra ingredients with the best-quality butter you can afford, and then spread it onto bread or add it to your dish. By doing this, it gains additional flavor easily, while making your food feel way more fancy.

Olive flavored compound butter is a breeze to make (you just have to mix olives and butter), but not everyone wants their butter to come with chunks of olive flesh that can be hard to spread. Luckily, if you want that olive flavor without compromising butter's smooth texture, you can just add olive brine. The brine will imbue your butter with extra richness, savoriness, and a pop of salt and vinegar. Importantly, you should avoid adding too much brine, as this can thin out your butter to the point where you can't spread it. Adding too much can also make your butter too salty, and therefore too overwhelming.

If you're not brining your turkey before cooking it, you're missing out on a lot of potential. Brining your turkey can help to infuse way more flavor into it, while also ensuring that it produces a moist result — and while some experts advise injecting your turkey with brine instead, not all of us have the equipment to do so. If you don't, you can leave your turkey to bathe in a salt-water solution for a good couple of hours, and enjoy a tender bird when it's cooked.

You shouldn't just rely on a simple brine to tenderize your meat, though: You should also add extra ingredients to give it way more flavor. That's where olive brine comes in. By using olive brine with your turkey, you can provide it with all of its savory, salty, vinegary flavors. The umami notes in particular help give your turkey meat (which can be quite bland at the best of times) a lot more depth. Just make sure you don't only use olive brine with your turkey. Not only will you likely not have enough to cover the bird entirely, but you can end up giving it too intense of a flavor. Cut the brine with some chicken or turkey stock, or some plain old water, and add in other herbs and spices to give it additional nuance.