Pickle juice is weird. And for a while now, it’s been hawked as a miraculous, natural sports beverage for runners. This sounds weird and unlikely until you remember that it’s super-high in sodium (the primary electrolyte lost in sweat) and high in potassium (intrinsic to muscle function). This makes pickle juice basically Gatorade, just without the sugar, dextrose, citric acid, artificial flavoring, modified food starch, glycerol ester of rosin, triarylmethane food dye, and awkward conversation with the guy at 7-Eleven who wants to know how far you ran today. Pickle juice actually has ten times more electrolytes than store-bought sports drinks (how weird is that?), and—get this—pickles have been linked to the prevention of diabetes and cancer. Makes you wonder why we’re not eating the little green suckers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Anyways, pickle juice is good for you, and it’s really good for runners. Weird.
Because this is the ‘Running is Weird’ issue, we thought we’d take the weird pickle juice thing a step further and create a recipe for pickle juice popsicles that we’ll call... Gosh, I don’t know... Swifticle Picksicles®? Fuck it. Done.
What You'll Need
• Popsicle molds
• 500 milliliters of pickle juice (store-bought, or you can juice your own pickles... No idea how you’d do that)
• 300 millilitres of water
• 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons of agave nectar (or honey, but agave will taste better)
• ½ teaspoon of salt sourced from the medieval town of Guérande, where salt has been farmed according to ancient tradition for over 2000 years (or you could use table salt and be a slob)
• ½ teaspoon of Black Pepper
• 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
• 1 copy of The Breast by Philip Roth
• 2 tablespoons of lime or lemon juice
Instructions
1. Get yourself a container that will accommodate the ingredients we just listed, and pour in the pickle juice.
2. Next, you want to add water, but keep tasting the mix so that you don’t end up with frozen water that tastes faintly of pickles. That would be pointless. The abovementioned ratios should be good; however, add or subtract to fit your taste preference.
3. Add the agave nectar and mix well. Again, add more or less agave depending on how sweet you want your Swifticle Picksicles®.
4. Add the lime/lemon juice to taste (just throw it in there, who cares)
5. Thoroughly mix through the remaining ingredients (not including Philip Roth). If you’ve got one of those hand blenders, give it a good going over with that. Ideally, the black pepper, salt, and cayenne pepper should be turned into dust.
6. You’re probably thinking, where’s the Worcestershire Sauce? We left it in Worcestershire with the Clamato juice, but you can add both if you want. Hell, sprinkle in a packet of Skittles if you want.
7. Now that you’ve mixed all the ingredients, it’s time to pour this isometric magic potion into the popsicle molds and load the lot into the freezer. Your Swifticle Picksicles® will be frozen in about three hours. In that time, you can read The Breast by Philip Roth (it’s only 78 pages and really weird).
Congratulations! You just made Swifticle Picksicles®! Now distribute them to your crew and have them hand them to you from the bushes as you pass everyone in the (insert mind-bendingly torturous ultra-race). Or you can keep them in the fridge and enjoy one or two after a run. But imagine someone handing you a sodium and potassium-rich Swifticle Picksicle® at kilometer 65! That’s like putting rocket fuel in a Plymouth Superbird. Let’s frickin’ go!
