Left your kombucha out for too long and it turned sour and nasty? Forgot about it and it over-fermented? Or maybe, you got coerced by the cute receptionist at your favourite yoga studio into buying a few bottles of premium (read: overpriced) kombucha, when you actually dislike the taste?

Don’t throw it out! Instead, give it a new life as a salad dressing!

It’s really easy, just simmer it over the stovetop to thicken it into a spoon-coating, slick syrup, intensifying its flavour and consistency Then, mix in some salt and oil, and you’ll get this complex tangy-sweet sauce to coat all your leafy greens in. The dressing tastes a little like iced lemon tea (probably due to the tea flavour in kombucha), which makes for a surprising (but not unwelcome) flavour in salads. In fact, I’d make a case that salad dressing might just be kombucha’s true destination.

It’s an idea I first came across in The Noma Guide to Fermentation. In it, Chef René Redzepi and David Zilber recommends to “let the liquid slowly evaporate until it’s about one-quarter of its original volume and can coat the back of a spoon. The slower the kombucha reduces, the better—don’t’ let it come to a boil or you’ll cook out all the flavor.” This is key to get a great tasting kombucha syrup, which the book also suggests to use as a pancake drizzle in place of maple syrup, or even on ice cream.

For me, I prefer mine as a dressing, to go along with some seaweed salad, because kombu-cha, geddit? *wink wink nudge nudge* Anyway, if you’re not a fan of salads, or salad dressings (I can understand the former, but not the latter), here’s a list of ideas for what to do with old, over-fermented kombucha, with the salad dressing right at the end:

Add It to Drinks

Again, you can either reduce it down into a syrupy caramel, or add it neat to fruit juice to make a shrub. This is similar to the typical flavoured kombuchas out there, just a bit fruitier and tangier with a higher ratio of fruit juice.

Marinate Meats with It

Acidic foods can work wonders as a base for marinating meats, or even vegetables. Pineapple juice or apple cider vinegar are used in marinades to tenderize meat, and adding kombucha will have a similar effect. Don’t leave your meat in the liquid for too long though (I’d say less than 6 hours), because the acidity of the liquid will turn the meat to mush.

Use It on Your Face?!

This is an idea that I came across on multiple sites, claiming that it’s “GREAT for your skin” and makes for a “wonderful facial toner.” I’ve never tried this personally, but hey if it works for people, why not? I won’t be surprised if people use their SCOBYs as a face mask next. (Oh god I have an inkling that it might already be a thing…)

Make Salad Dressing

And of course, you can turn your kombucha into a cool dressing for salads. You can easily reduce down the caramel, and keep it in your fridge for weeks (possibly months). Whenever you need it, just stir up a tablespoon of the kombucha syrup in a tablespoon of oil, season it, and you’ve got a drizzle-ready dressing.

Also, funny story, I actually experimented with a kombu-flavoured kombucha, where I added a piece of kombu to the kombucha during the secondary fermentation. It didn’t alter the flavour much, apart from a barely detectable hint of salinity, but I suppose if you want to go that extra mile with the whole kombu theme, feel free to flavour your kombucha with kombu! (Let me know and I’ll send over a recipe/guide for it.

Here are some extra tips to get you making a killer kombucha dressing:

Reduce the kombucha low and slow. This allows more flavour to be retained, as opposed to boiling it, which would more violently remove the flavour into the air.
The amount of oil to kombucha is variable. But I like to go with a 1:1 ratio for this, because the kombucha syrup isn’t as eye-wateringly sour as most vinegars (which go by a more traditional 3:1 oil-to-vinegar ratio)
Depending on your kombucha, the resulting dressing will vary in taste. So it’s always handy to have a little lemon juice ready just in case your dressing is lacking a bit of sour zing.

Kombucha Salad Dressing

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

Dressing
240g (1 cup) kombucha
30g (2 tablespoons) grapeseed or flaxseed oil, or any neutral oil
5g (1 teaspoon) sesame oil
5g (1 teaspoon) mirin
2g (1/4 teaspoon) salt
5g (1 teaspoon) lemon juice, optional

Salad
20g dried wakame (Japanese seaweed)
1 Japanese cucumber
½ head green coral lettuce
½ head purple coral lettuce
5g roasted white sesame seeds, to garnish

Directions

Reduce kombucha: Pour the kombucha into a wide pan (a frying pan works great), and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down to low so it no longer bubbles, and let it cook and evaporate for 30-45 minutes, or until the kombucha turns into a spoon-coating-thick syrup. For the 240ml of kombucha, I’d recommend reducing it down to about 30g (2 tablespoons) of intense syrup.
Make dressing: In a bowl, whisk together the kombucha syrup, grapeseed oil, sesame oil, and salt until it comes together into a smooth, homogenous mixture. Give the dressing a taste, and stir in lemon juice to your desired level of sourness.
Hydrate seaweed: Place the dried wakame in a bowl together with water, give it a stir, and let it sit for 5 minutes to fully hydrate, then remove the wakame, squeezing out the excess water.
Make the salad: Slice the cucumber into small batons. Tear up the lettuce leaves. Then, toss the cucumbers, lettuce, and wakame in a bowl. Add the kombucha dressing to this, and toss some more, until the greens are well coated in dressing. (Start with 2-3 tablespoons of dressing first, then add more to taste.)
Serve and eat: Top the salad with the sesame seeds, and eat immediately.