Food - Drink

The Absolute Best Uses For Olive Jar Juice

By JOHN TOLLEY

Lurking in crevasses and hidden in plain sight in your fridge and pantry are a great many morsels and spoonfuls of flavorful ingredients, if you know where to look. One of the most potent items that gets overlooked is piquant olive brine, but how are you supposed to transform this salty, tangy juice?

Olives are fruits, but they are intensely bitter straight off the tree, so they are cured with various mediums, from water to brine to lye, to draw out the bitter compound oleuropein. The common thread in all of the curing processes is the use of pickling salt and vinegar, which creates the tangy solution filling your jar of olives.

This brine can be added to everything from dirty martinis to grain bowls, vegetable soups, and pasta dishes — especially the famously-assertive pasta alla puttanesca. Olive brine also shines when added to bound salads, such as egg, potato, or tuna, and works great in marinades.

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