Pickle Juice substitute

Best substitute

Sauerkraut Juice or Cabbage Brine

Use the same amount as the pickle juice you are replacing

Best for rassolnik and Polish pickle soup

Close match

The best swap, and in Eastern European cooking arguably the more authentic liquid of the two. It is the same thing chemically, a fermented vegetable brine, so it brings the same lactic sourness, the same salt and the same slightly fizzy savoury depth. The flavour difference is cabbage instead of cucumber, plus a touch more funk, which suits rassolnik, hunter's stew and pork braises very well and reads slightly oddly in a cold ranch-style dressing. Use it wherever you would use fermented pickle brine and do not bother adjusting anything.

Other pickle juice substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Homemade Dill Brine
Close match
Use the same amount
Quick, cheap and close enough for almost any use.
What changes
Warm three quarters of a cup of water with a quarter cup of white vinegar, one and a half teaspoons of salt and half a teaspoon of sugar until they dissolve, then add half a teaspoon of dried dill or a few fronds of fresh, a smashed garlic clove, a few peppercorns and a bay leaf, and cool it. It comes out sharper and cleaner than jarred brine, with a bright vinegar edge and none of the rounded funk of a fermented pickle jar, which matters in a simple soup and not at all in a marinade. Let it sit an hour if you have time and the aromatics come through much better.
Best for
brining chicken or pork, marinades and dressings, quick fridge pickles, adding a splash of acid to soup
Cool it fully before it touches raw meat. Warm brine on chicken is a food safety problem, not a shortcut.
3Olive Brine or Caper Brine
Different taste
Use the same amount
Right on the salt and acid axes and wrong on the aroma axis, which makes it excellent in some places and clumsy in others.
What changes
Olive brine tastes of olives, briny and slightly bitter and faintly fruity, and caper brine is floral and pungent, so a vinaigrette, a dirty martini or a chicken brine made with either is genuinely good, arguably better than pickle juice for a dressing. In a Polish pickle soup or a rassolnik the olive note sits awkwardly against the dill and sour cream. It is also usually saltier than pickle brine, so taste before you salt anything else.
Best for
salad dressings and vinaigrettes, dirty martinis, brining chicken and turkey, pasta salads and potato salads
Green olive brine is closer to pickle brine than black olive brine, which is darker, softer and often just salted water.
4Diluted Vinegar With Salt
Different taste
3 parts water to 1 part vinegar, salted to taste, then use 1:1
The bare-bones version and perfectly serviceable when the brine was only there for acid and salt.
What changes
Mix three parts water to one part white or cider vinegar and stir in about a teaspoon of salt per cup. It tenderises and seasons meat exactly as pickle brine does and gives a dressing the sourness it needs. What it lacks entirely is the dill, garlic, spice and fermented depth, so anything where you would taste the brine directly comes out noticeably flat and one-note. Adding a pinch of dill and a crushed garlic clove takes almost no effort and helps a lot.
Best for
marinating and tenderising meat, brining before frying chicken, deglazing and pan sauces, adjusting the acidity of a finished dish
Straight undiluted vinegar is not a substitute for pickle brine. It is several times more acidic, and it will make meat mushy on the surface and a dressing undrinkable.
5Lemon Juice, Water and Salt
Different taste
1 part lemon juice to 2 parts water, salted, then use 1:1
A good choice when the recipe just needs brightness.
What changes
Citric acid tastes fruitier and rounder than the acetic acid in vinegar, so a dressing or a marinade made this way is fresher and less harsh, and it works particularly well with fish, chicken and vegetables. It brings no dill, no garlic and no fermented savouriness, and the flavour reads clearly as lemon, which is fine in a vinaigrette and out of place in a Slavic soup where nobody expects citrus. Salt it to about a teaspoon per cup so it seasons as pickle juice would.
Best for
vinaigrettes and slaws, marinating fish and chicken, brightening a finished sauce, cocktails needing a saline sour note
Bottled lemon juice works but tastes duller and slightly cooked. Fresh is worth it here because the acid is the entire contribution.
6Whey From Strained Yogurt
Different taste
Use the same amount salted
A genuinely useful and much overlooked option, and the byproduct is free if you strain yogurt or make cheese at home.
What changes
Whey is mildly acidic and full of lactic tang, so it tenderises meat beautifully and gives dressings and cold soups a soft sourness. It is far less salty and less sharp than pickle brine, so salt it to taste, and it tastes distinctly dairy rather than briny. It also contains milk sugars, which brown faster, so chicken brined in whey colours more quickly in the pan and can catch if the heat is high.
Best for
brining chicken and pork, cold soups and cold sauces, marinades for grilling, tenderising tough cuts
Whey from tvorog or strained Greek yogurt is ideal. Sweetened or flavoured yogurt whey brings sugar and vanilla with it, which is not what you want on a chicken thigh.

What is Pickle Juice?

Pickle Juice is Pickle juice, also called pickle brine or dill pickle juice and known as rassol in Russian kitchens, is the seasoned liquid left in a jar of pickles: water, salt, either vinegar or the lactic acid of fermentation, plus dill, garlic and pickling spices.

Cooking tips

Know which kind of brine you have. Fermented pickle brine is cloudy, refrigerated, contains no vinegar on the label, and tastes rounded and savoury-sour. Vinegar brine is clear, shelf-stable and sharply acidic. For marinades and dressings they are interchangeable. For Eastern European soups like rassolnik and zupa ogorkowa, the lactic sourness and cloudiness of the fermented kind are exactly the point.
Brine is salt first and flavour second. Take the salt out of the rest of the recipe before you add brine, then taste and season at the end. A soup that got a cup of pickle juice usually needs no added salt at all.
For meat, use about half a cup of brine per pound and stop at two to four hours. Longer soaks turn the surface of chicken or pork spongy and unpleasantly salty, which is the usual reason pickle-brined fried chicken goes wrong.
Add brine to soup at the end, off the boil, and taste as you go. Boiling drives off the dill and garlic aroma and leaves you with plain sourness, so long-simmered brine tastes harsher than a splash stirred in at the finish.
Do not reuse leftover pickle brine to make shelf-stable canned pickles. Once cucumbers have sat in it, the acidity has been diluted by their water and is no longer known or reliable, so there is a real botulism risk in canning with it. Reused brine is fine for refrigerator pickles eaten within a couple of weeks. For anything shelf-stable, follow a tested recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation and do not alter its vinegar.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use pickle juice instead of vinegar?

Usually yes, roughly measure for measure, but with two adjustments. Pickle juice is less acidic than straight vinegar because it is mostly water, so a dressing may taste softer and need a little more. It is also much saltier, so cut the salt elsewhere in the recipe first and taste before adding any. In baking, where vinegar is reacting with baking soda, pickle juice works but its dill and garlic will come through, so it is a poor choice for anything sweet.

Can I just leave the pickle juice out?

In a marinade or a dressing, yes, provided you replace what it was doing: add salt and an acid such as vinegar or lemon juice. In rassolnik or Polish pickle soup you cannot, because the brine is the defining flavour of the dish and without it you have a plain barley or potato soup. Sauerkraut juice is the substitute to reach for in that case.

Can I reuse pickle brine to make more pickles?

For refrigerator pickles, yes. Drop fresh cut cucumbers into the leftover brine, keep them cold, and eat them within a couple of weeks, accepting that the second batch will be milder because the brine has been diluted. For shelf-stable canned pickles, no. The acidity of used brine is unknown and too low to rely on, and low-acid canned vegetables carry a botulism risk. Always use a fresh brine from a tested canning recipe for jars you intend to store at room temperature.

Does sweet pickle juice work the same way?

Only where you want sweetness. Bread-and-butter and sweet pickle brine carries a lot of sugar, so it makes a decent glaze, a good marinade for pork or chicken and a pleasant sweet-sour dressing, but it will make a savoury soup taste like sweet and sour soup. If it is all you have for a savoury dish, dilute it with an equal amount of water and add a teaspoon of vinegar and a pinch of salt per half cup.

Is drinking pickle juice actually good for cramps?

It is a long-standing habit among athletes and it is mostly salty, acidic water, which is worth understanding for what it is rather than treating as medicine. If you want it as a drink, it is a salty one, and anyone watching their sodium for medical reasons should treat it accordingly. For cooking purposes, none of that matters, and the point of the brine is seasoning.

Related substitutes

More liquids substitutes

Pickle Juice substitute

Other pickle juice substitutes

2Homemade Dill Brine

3Olive Brine or Caper Brine

4Diluted Vinegar With Salt

5Lemon Juice, Water and Salt

6Whey From Strained Yogurt