Chip and Joanna Gaines Have an Ingenious Use for Pickle Juice

Pickle juice is pretty amazing stuff. Don’t you dare put it down the drain after you consume the last pickle! It’s excellent in salad dressings, marinades, and even in cocktails. You can use it to pickle more things by adding new vegetables to the jar your regular pickles used to live in. It can even be used to soothe a sunburn. Now Chip and Joanna Gaines have found yet another cool thing to do with pickle juice, and this one has nothing to do with the kitchen.

Chip and Joanna Gaines renovate a lot of properties on their wildly popular HGTV show, Fixer Upper.Often these projects involve making things look older, like giving wood beams the appearance of being weathered or adding a distressed finish to furniture.

On the most recent episode of Fixer Upper, Joanna Gaines wanted to put copper accents on the client’s roof. There was a faux copper option that cost less, but Gaines said they should go with real copper, because synthetic copper doesn’t get that gorgeous green patina copper develops as it ages.

But once they spent the money on real copper, they decided they didn’t want to wait a couple decades for it to turn that pretty green color. Joanna Gaines said she heard that you could use salt to help copper turn green prematurely.

According to Realtor.com, Chip Gaines tried several different substances to age the copper, but the only thing that made the copper look like it was suddenly decades older was pickle juice. How smart is that?

Not convinced? This cool science project for kids shows how to make pennies turn green using vinegar and salt, or lemon juice and salt. Salt, vinegar, and lemon juice are all the things that make pickle juice so delicious, and they can also apparently make your copper fixtures turn a pretty shade of green in no time at all.