Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Two great tastes!

On Sunday, The Peach and I were cleaning out the fridge and we came across a pickle jar that had about 1 pickle in it and about 1/3 full of juice. She was going to dump it out, but then I said, "You know, I bet you can make all kinds of things with pickles. Leave it for me and I'll see what I can make with it." She looked at me with that look she gets when I say something weird but she wants to see what the results will be, so she agreed. On Monday night I typed "pickle juice recipes" into the search engine and came up with a number of hits, including the excellently-named www.ilovepickles.org. That site has a page that had recipes involving pickle and sauerkraut brine. I looked through them, and I saw a few things that I would like to try but didn't have all the ingredients for. And then I saw the final entry:

You've heard of squeezing a wedge of lime into your beer. Now, adding some dill pickle juice to your brew could be the next craze. Stir 1/8 cup dill pickle liquid into 12 ounces of your favorite beer and garnish with a pickle spear or baby dill.

At first, I will admit, I was shocked. But then I thought: hold on. There's a history of adding things to beer. You can add limes to beer. There are boilermakers; in fact, there are all kinds of beer cocktails. Why not try it? What's the worst that could happen? So I did. And it was good. But it was lacking something. And then I realized what that thing was: Louisiana Hot Sauce. So let me present to you, my friends, a drink recipe that you will think is awful, but is actually surprisingly good.

The Dillinger
1 can beer (I used good ol' Pil, but I'm sure any pale beer would do)
2-3 tbsp dill pickle brine
hot sauce to taste
dill pickle slice for garnish

And no, this is not an April Fool's Day joke. I am drinking it right now and it is dill-icious. Oh, the things I get up to when my wife's away...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That actually sounds not bad, to be honest. I usually need to add a little something to my beer. I'd try it with sweet gherkins as I'm not a huge fan of dill pickles.
Never offer it to NinjaStolz though; between his slight beer allergy and his actual dill allergy, that sounds like a glass of sweet, juicy death for him.
(He would, however, be ok with the hot sauce.)