BBQ Marinade
Recipe type: Sauce
This is a sure-fire marinade, I made it up years ago and it’s been a hit ever since. The amounts are approximate on purpose – play with it! This marinade works with chicken, pork, beef and bison. You can add to the ingredient list and make it your own with other spices as well. The important thing with any marinade is that you have sour elements (vinegar and rice wine) to soften the meat, oil to smooth out and carry the flavors and aromatics to spice up the meat.
Ingredients
- Diced onions
- Finely chopped garlic
- Finely chopped ginger
- Rice vinegar
- Rice wine (Chinese)
- Soy Sauce (thin and thick)
- Olive oil
- Sesame seed oil (dark)
- Black and white pepper to taste
- Five spice powder if you want
- Note: Soy sauce comes in thick and thin versions; the thick is sweeter, is sometimes called ‘Kecap Manis’ or sweet soy sauce on the label. It is available in most Asian grocery stores that carry Southeast Asian products. If you are using the two sauces you should plan on a proportion of about ⅓ sweet to ⅔ thin for this marinade.
Instructions
- Mix together in the proportions you prefer – I usually just chop up a pile of onions and garlic (the more meat, the more onions, garlic and ginger) and then add the marinade ingredients until I have a nice soupy mix and the flavors are pleasing. Be careful about the sesame oil – a little goes a long way.
- Tuck your meat into the sauce and let soak for about 6 hours, and then BBQ.
- Throw away the remains of the marinade. You could cook it down and use as a sauce if you wanted, but it might end up being too salty and strong because of the soy sauce and ginger.