Marinades

Happy Valentines Day! Since some of you may be preparing a meat selection tonight, I decided to make today's post on something to make your meat more flavorful!

One of our favorite methods to add flavor without adding too many calories is to marinate a piece of meat. We've done it with two methods: store bought bottles and make-your-own.

Creating your own isn't too difficult. All marinades contain an oil, a salt, an acid and seasoning. So, for example you want to do an Asian themed dinner, you could add:

Sesame Oil (Oil)

Honey (Seasoning)

Sirache (Seasoning/Acid)

Soy Sauce (Salt/Acid)

Rice Wine Vinegar (Acid)

Mirin (Acid)

Garlic (Seasoning)

Onion (Seasoning)

Ginger (Seasoning)

Chinese Five Spice (Seasoning)

Lime Juice (Acid)

Feeling Italian instead?

Red Wine (Acid)

Kosher Salt (Salt)

Olive Oil (Oil)

Oregano (Seasoning)

Parsley (Seasoning)

Sage (Seasoning)

So, as you can see you can use multiple ingredients with overlapping purposes, or you can have a simpler “attack plan,” of single task ingredients. The benefit to making your own is that you can control what goes in and how much goes in. Trying to scale back your sodium intake? Just use enough salt to let the magic happen. Don't want to use wines because of the alcohol? Use vinegars or citrus juices instead. Lemon, lime and orange juices all work very well. Plus, when you make your own...you don't have to worry about what those ingredients you can't pronounce are.