The Biggest Meat Marinating Mistake To Avoid This Summer

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One of the best ways to both tenderize and add flavor to your meat is to use a marinade. Marinating is a fairly simple process, but there are still a few ways you can mess it up. One is to marinate meat for over 24 hours since doing so can make it mushy. Another is to throw away the marinade instead of repurposing it as a delicious sauce. Yet a third marinating mistake is one that many people are not aware of — adding solid ingredients to the mix. Rosangela Teodoro, who runs Teodora's Boucherie Gourmande in Cohasset, Massachusetts, explained to us, "The use of chunky spices in a marinade, although visually appealing, generally harms the preparation of the meat."

If, for example, you flavor your marinade with minced onions, whole peppercorns, or star anise pods, Teodoro said, "These ingredients will have a limited surface area of contact with the meat, and the flavor compounds in these ingredients will be released slowly and incompletely." This means they won't add much taste to the meat unless you get a bite containing one of the chunks. This may well be quite flavorful, but not in a good way. As the butcher warned, "Coarse spices are more prone to burning when exposed to direct high temperatures, drying out and charring quickly, and consequently, leading to a bitter taste that will be transferred to the meat." She also noted, "Large pieces of seasoning, such as whole garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs ... can give the meat an undesirable texture as they can interfere with the formation of a uniform crust if the marinade is not removed properly."

While our easiest three-ingredient marinade is made with liquid ingredients only (these being soy sauce, olive oil, and lime juice), many cooks like to add herbs and spices to the mix. The best way to do so is to throw them in the food processor with a little of the liquid. According to Rosangela Teodoro, "By blending these ingredients until they are homogeneous, you will be breaking down the cell walls of these spices, allowing the marinade to infuse the meat more deeply and evenly in less time." If you're adding salt, you may want to allow it to dissolve in the marinade before adding the meat. That way, you won't have any crystals sticking to the surface.

If you've chosen to tenderize your meat using an enzymatic fruit such as kiwi, papaya, or pineapple, you'll also need the aid of a food processor. Fruit chunks may not do much for your meat, but once they've been pureed, they'll be able to coat the entire surface. Should you wish to flavor your marinade with chocolate, your best bet is either to use cocoa powder or to melt the chocolate before combining it with the other ingredients.