Marinate your meat to make it more tender and flavorful. While cooks have used bottled sauces to marinade meat since the 1800s, according to Easy Steak Marinades, you can develop your own marinade from ingredients you already have in your kitchen. Marinades are easy to make and incredibly versatile. You can even make up your own marinade recipes once you know the basics of marinating beef or kabobs for the grill.
Types of Marinades
You might rub your beef or kabob meat with a dry marinade before grilling, using a dab of olive oil to adhere herbs and spices to the meat. Dry marinades, or rubs, only impart flavor and do not tenderize the meat. Wet marinades always include a liquid acid, like mustard, wine, beer, citrus fruit like lemon, lime or orange, yogurt or flavored vinegars. You might even try using fruit like pineapple, melon or kiwi as the acid base. Wet marinades might also contain herbs and spices to flavor your food, and oil to prevent drying.
Science of Marinating
Marinating adds flavor to meat. Raw meat does not have much flavor because it is made up of big, boring molecules. Cooking breaks down these molecules into smaller, tastier particles. Marinating and cooking meat also breaks down connective tissue into a gelatinous consistency that adds flavor and juice to otherwise chewy cuts. Marinades contain enzymes that digest meat's protein, breaking down any connective tissue that it comes into contact with. These enzymes are heat activated between the temperatures of 140 to 175 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Marinade.com.
Beef Marinades
Marinate steak in a blended combination of soy sauce, olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, dried basil, parsley and white pepper for about eight hours before grilling. Teriyaki marinades are simple: simply soak meat for three hours in a mixture of brown sugar, soy sauce, lemon juice, ginger and garlic.
Chicken and Vegetables
Marinated chicken alternating with vegetables makes for a healthy grilled kabob. It is less common but quite possible to marinade vegetables for grilling. Chicken does not contain as much tough connective tissue as beef so you will not need to marinate chicken for quite as long. Soak two chicken breasts in a marinade made from one half of an onion, 3 tsp. each of oregano and thyme, six finely chopped garlic cloves, a cup of lemon juice and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Make a Hawaiian chicken kabob marinade with garlic powder, sugar, wine vinegar, pineapple juice, sherry and soy sauce.
Considerations
Do not marinate your vegetables in the same liquid as you soaked the meat to avoid bacterial contamination. Marinating works very slowly, risking a bitter flavor as the marinade concentrates at the surface of meat. Meat left to marinade too long takes on a mushy texture and unappealing appearance
Member Comments