Marinating tips to enhance the taste of all meaty preparations!
Mom! This fish in herb sauce just tastes awesome! And your face brightens up! Your kids are just devouring even the last morsel of this mouth-watering fish recipe that you’ve served them for lunch.
Thank god! You followed just the right techniques of marinating your fish prior to cooking.
Most expert cooks will agree instantaneously that some of the great tasting fish, seafood, chicken, meat or even few vegetarian recipes, can be churned out successfully if you can optimally marinate these items with just the right blend of marinades following the right techniques of marinating a few hours prior to cooking/grilling/barbecuing or whatever.
Here are a few useful marinating tips that you can apply to enhance the taste of all those lip-smacking barbecues, grills, or fries!
Marinating time depends greatly on the size and type of foodstuffs you want to marinate. The marinade times are crucial in bringing out the distinct flavors in your fish, chicken, or meat recipes.
So, ideally, any kind of fish/seafood must be marinated for 15minutes-1 hour, chicken/turkey/any other bird meat between 1/2-3 hours while all kinds of red meat must be kept aside overnight dipped in the marinades inside the refrigerator.
Vegetables need not be marinated for long hours, you can just marinate them for a maximum of 1/2 hours or so.
Make sure that each and every ingredient of the marinade is uniformly rubbed all over and covers the fish/poultry/meat/veggies items totally.
In this way, the fish/meat/veggies absorb the herbs and spices thoroughly and thus the marinades are effective in enhancing the taste of your recipe.
While preparing fish, poultry, or meat for marination remove the layers of fat and skin. This facilitates the perfect penetration of each of the marinating ingredients.
You must never use metal containers or bowls to marinate foods for extended periods of time more than 2 hours especially red meats that usually require 12-14 hours of marination time.
The acidic ingredients in the marinades chemically react with the metal imparting an unpleasant taste to the marinated foodstuffs that might also become unhealthy to eat posing food-poisoning risks.
Ideal materials for marinating foods include glass, plastic, or ceramic. So, always make use of glass/plastic/ceramic bowls or plastic zip-pouches to marinate fish, chicken, meat, or vegetables.
Never reuse used marinade in any other recipe. After marinating raw meat/poultry the marinades being in direct contact with the raw items run the risk of harboring harmful bacteria that can cause food-poisoning hazards.
So, if you really want to reuse a particularly used marinade then always boil the marinade juice/liquid for a few minutes before reusing it to spice up soups, gravies, or as a basting sauce for grills/barbecues. The boiling kills the bacteria.
In the case of meat/poultry never fork the meat prior to marinating. The holes thus created due to forking allow the marinade juices to flow out of the meat.
Do not prepare or use excessively thick marinades for marination. The thick marinades cannot penetrate very well and thus the final flavors of the main dish get affected.
