On The Benefits of Marinating Your Food

I love to marinate. This extra step can make a simple weekday meal step-up from being ho-hum, to hot-damn!

Meat, fish – even veggies. It’s a regular habit of mine. Here’s a quick marinade that I’ve found to compliment chicken, steak and trout or salmon. I know, right? All three? Sure. Break the rules sometimes – it will be all good.

Local Wild Trout

a Happy Grill

Tonight I used it on wild trout from our local Farmer’s Market, a left over concoction from the weekend where I used the 1st half on these badass buffalo cowgirl steaks. Also from said Farmer’s Market. Holy toledo these girls are TO. DIE. FOR. You don’t even know! But you want to! Damn! They pretty much put anyone I make them for into a state of ecstasy.

On It's Way...

Screwed

Badass-ness

Obviously you don’t want to use the same marinade all the time. I’m just saying this one is dang good and it makes sense to make a large amount of it to use perhaps the following week on a different meat or fish. Ya feel me? You could also do variations – get creative, trust your instincts. Given that you have good instincts. If you don’t, well, uhm…yes. That’s what recipes are for. To be followed step by step.

More Badass-ness

Fish Even a Toddler Adores

The Goods, (Marinade):

• 2 1/2 parts Olive Oil
• 1 parts Red Wine
• Lots of Fresh Garlic (I go with 4 or 6 cloves. Whateve’s. it’s good for you).
• Fresh Basil (Again. I go with a ridiculous amount. It’s the one herb I grew this year, which comes up in glorious abundance so the well is always full to draw from).
• Liquid Smoke (6 dashy glugs. What? It’s an official cooking term. Look it up.)
• Worcestershire Sauce (Same as above).

Do you have a magic bullet? I do. Use it or something like it to emulsify your marinade. Put all that stuff up there in your blender and zing it up. Something about emulsifying all of the ingredients together that way just puts it over the top. Now pour it on whatever hunk of meat or fish your little heart desires. A stickler for following the rules? Change the red wine to white wine if your doing fish or use lemon juice instead. Leave out the brown english stuff and perhaps replace it with a smidgen of mustard or maple syrup. Or both. The devil you say!?! It’ll be ok. More than in fact.

A whole whack of marinated foods & some very happy peeps...