The Lazy Genius Podcast - #95 The Lazy Genius Guide to Marinades

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

In all the time I spent dreaming and planning for this podcast, I never thought I’d spend an episode talking about marinades. But here we are. My DMs blow up every time I make something with a marinade. You ask, “What’s in that liquid?” You say, “My dinners never turn out like this.” And you worry about things turning out salty. A lot. Well, today we’re talking about creating your own magical marinades that can take an average meal from “meh” to “best meal ever!” Important Stuff Check out the whirlwind of a 24 hours — including receiving a shout out from Pam Beesly Halpert herself —I had on Instagram last week. Listen to the Lazy Genius Buys Meat for ideas and tips on buying things to slather in marinade before cooking. Level up your cooking skills and learn how to cook without a recipe. Download a transcript of this episode! This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. You're listening to Episode 95, The Lazy Genius Guide to Marinerades. I am pretty sure when I started this podcast almost three years ago, I did not anticipate some of the topics we would dive into for an entire episode like Maranades. It is pretty fantastic. The reason we're going so specifically into this is because whenever I mention a meal that involves a marinade of any kind, mostly on Instagram, where you can follow me at The Lacey Genius. You guys ask all kinds of questions and understandably. Using maraudes seems like this natural skill we're supposed to have as people who make and eat food. But marinerades

always seem like really random, especially if you haven't been taught how to use them. So that's what we're going to do today. But before we jump into the ins and outs of marauds, I want to say thank you. last week was a big week for me on Instagram. If you miss the fun or you just want to watch the stories again, I don't know, you can check my sorry what highlight to see exactly what happened. But essentially within a few hours of each other, an interview I did with The Kitchen, which is like my favorite food website, it was on their main site on the homepage, like my face, which is bonkers.

And then a couple hours after that, Jenna Fisher, aka Pam from the office, talked about this very podcast on her Instagram stories. You guys, it was quite a day. I'm still recovering a little bit from it. But the coolest thing, it wasn't being on the kitchen. It wasn't being on my favorite food website or being mentioned by one of my favorite legit celebrities. Sincerely, the best part of that whole thing, of that whole day was how excited you guys

were. My DMs were literally flooded with all kinds of. of like party emojis and congratulations and messages like, I know we don't know each other, but I feel like you're a friend and I'm so excited for you. It was seriously the kindest, kindest thing. And it brought me to tears a couple of times, honestly. I'm just so grateful for you for your personal investment in me and in your investment in each other to make as many lazy geniuses as possible. It's just like the sweetest, kindest, most encouraging 24 hours. So thank you, thank you. Thank you. And you know what happened? After just,

Jenna Fisher's post, y'all, this podcast was in the top 200 of all podcasts on iTunes for four entire days. That's bonkers. I am, I'm often ranked like just in my category, but ranked in all the podcast. That's just stupid, y'all. But I saw DMs and Instagram stories from so many folks sharing how they binged the show and wanted everyone to listen. So word was really spreading and it was so fun. So if you have any interest in keeping that energy going, but you hop over to iTunes and leave a review. You can do it in your Apple podcast app or on your laptop, but you can give like a star rating and quickly type out of review. The Apple people, they really love reviews and they put the show higher up in the ranks because of that.

And then more people find the show when they're like scrolling to find out what's happening. So if you haven't left a review and you love the show, I'd be so grateful if you would leave one now. Well, maybe not like exactly now because we need to talk about marauds or you can pause. It's fine. start with a little context on marronades. There are three places you use flavorful liquids in cooking. That's kind of what marinids sort of are. First, on meat or even vegetables, but we're going to talk about meat mostly today. Use them on meat or vegetables before they're cooked to add flavor and make them tender. This is usually what people call a marinade. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Now, second, you add flavorful liquid to food.

at the end of cooking, like still on the heat to bring it all together. This is what folks usually call a sauce. Tomato sauce and pasta is an easy example. As is a bottle of terriaki you pour on stir fry at the end of the cooking. And then third, you add something to food after it's cooked, like maybe even already in your bowl or on your plate. That's like a dressing or drizzle sauce, something you put on like a rice bowl. Now in this episode, we're talking about the first one only. I talk about dressings a little bit in the lazy genius. salad episode and then we're going to save like the drizzle sauces for the episode that I'm going to do soon about food in a bowl because we're going to do one of those but for today we're

just going to talk about marinerades that go on meat before you cook the meat okay so can you believe you're doing this an entire episode on this I'm so excited so let's go through the why what when and how who feels a little irrelevant here so I'm going to skip like trying to be clever with a who. First, why? The purpose of a marinade is to inject a lot of flavor into the meat, and it usually makes the meat more tender, too. Cooking meat, it can feel really overwhelming because it's generally way more expensive than other foods we eat, and we don't want to mess it up. A way that you can have better success cooking meat is by using a marinade. The flavor is going to be better, but because the meat is made more tender, marinerades make over-cooking more food.

forgiving. If you overcook like pork chops with and without a marinade, you'll notice a difference in how tasty and tender the overcooked chop is, even if it's overcooked. It just kind of helps it along. It just makes it like it makes the mistakes not quite as bad. So why use a marinade? Why? Tasty tender meat. Amen. Okay. Next what? What's generally in a marinade? Now you can buy bottles of marinade very easily and totally can. But for the sake of simplicity and not spending a lot of money on something, you don't know how tastes. And if it's even good, let's run down what can go in a handful of essential marinerades to get you started. Here are the three things you always need in a marinate. Salt, fat, and acid. I promise this will not be another TED talk on how much I love the

cookbook, salt, fat, acid heat. You can listen to the episode. about cooking without a recipe for that, but you do need those three things in some form to make your marinade do its best work. Salt is usually just salt on the meat, okay? But it can also be in the form of like soy sauce. That's real salty. If I'm making a marinade that has soy sauce, I'll barely season the actual meat with a little salt and then let the soy do the rest. So you need salt. You also need fat. This is almost always a drizzle of oil in the simplest form. And you and it helps all the flavors in your marinade travel to the entire piece of meat. Fat is also flavor, and it makes the meat in a better position to be cooked on your

skeleton or in your grill because it's already a little greased up. Lots of reasons fat is good. And then finally, acid. Acid is what will make your meat tender. Salt does that a little as well. So does acid. It is also what will make your meat like gently cook while it marines. Don't let that freak you out too much.

I'll explain that in a minute. But acid breaks down the molecules in your meat and it makes them more tender. It also gives this nice bite of flavor and it keeps things a little interesting and also balanced. Now, if you cooked a piece of chicken that sat in just salt and a little olive oil, it'd be delicious. But add a squeeze of lemon to that same marinade. Angel's singing, you guys. Acid makes everything pop in flavor and it becomes tender in texture. So lemon and lime juice, vinegar, stuff like that.

is your acid. Now if you want to get crazy, add something that has flavor like herbs and spices. You can add fresh, dried herbs, any kind of spices you want. Obviously different herbs and spices make sense for different cuisines, but in general, that's how you bump up the flavor in your marinerates. Always start with salt. It's essential. You'll get flavor from marinating the meat and fat, but you'll get even more by having a little acid. And then your final step, if you want, any herbs and spices. So they just kind of like build on each other. I promise I'll give you some actual ingredient combo ideas before this episode is over. So hang tight. So we know why to use a marinade. What should go in one, the building blocks. And now let's look at when you use one.

Generally, the longer the marinade marinerates the meat, the better the flavor and texture of the meat. 15 minutes is better than zero minutes. But three or four hours is definitely better than 15 minutes. And I don't, I don't mean better like your value as a person. I just mean better flavor in your meat. It's like more bang for your marinating book. Now, you can mix a marinade a day or two before you want to use it and just leave it in like a little mason jar or a plastic container in your fridge. That is one of my favorite answers to the magic question. Actually, the magic question is, I talk about on Instagram a lot, is what can I do now to make dinner easier later? Make a marinate. you just like mix it up and then you're ready to pour it over whatever meat strikes your fancy

when you're at the store later. Now how long can meat marinate in a marinade? The USDA, you ready for this? I have like actual information from the government. The USDA says that if you have meat in a marinade in the fridge, chicken can go two days and then like other meats like reddish meats like pork and beef and lamb they can go as long as five days now if you buy meat that has that three dollar off this package sticker because the sell by date is today the marinade it will not magically extend that meat's life you still need to go by the cell date first to be safe and then you can let the marinade timing go second but if you have like a regular package of chicken breast and that you are from the store and they're not going to go bad for like several days and you put them in a Ziploc bag

with a marinade and you plan on using it that night but you end up and you end up and you end up and end up like being invited over for, you know, like an impromptu dinner at a friend's house after soccer practice or something. You're fine to save the chicken for dinner the next night. Zero problems. Okay, now let's look at how. How do you marinate meat with the marinate. The marinate is the thing. The marinating is the action. That's a really fun, a fun little grammar lesson we just had. Okay. Now the biggest thing to remember with the how, is that you want the marinade to cover every bit of the meat. I find the best way to do that is in a sit-block bag

because you can massage the meat and move it around without using a spoon or getting your hands gross, like you might in a bowl or a container. Another great way, though, if you want to avoid using a lot of plastic waste, is to use a container that is just barely bigger than the meat and marinade together. That way the meat can't escape the marinade's clutches.

For example, like if you get a big wide, shallow Tupperware container and you put your chicken in there and then you pour your marinade over the top. The liquid is going to like pool around the edges of the large container because the chicken isn't really filling the container like to its corners, right? And so then the top of the chicken is not going to be covered. I realize this is like the tiniest bit obvious. But I think sometimes those seemingly obvious things are the ones we don't realize they're tripping us up. So if I'm not using a gallon plastic bag personally, I'm using a quart container like you would for soup. Those ones that Ina Garton really love. on barefoot Contessa. The liquid is all over that meat without any hope of escape because the chicken's like frum, frum, like crammed in there. And it's not, there aren't any edges exposed, like edges of the containers exposed. Every bit gets flavor, which is what you want. So just make sure there isn't any wasted liquid in like too big or too wide of a container.

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whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you're going to marinate your meat for no more than like 30 or 45 minutes, I just leave it at room temperature. It will work faster. It takes the chill off the meat, which will help the meat cook better,

since it's already kind of closer to room temperature. Even if I have had meat in the fridge all day marinating, I'll still take the bag out like half an hour before it's time to cook to take that chill off. And I can tell a really decent difference when I do, because the meat's just ready to like it's ready to cook you know now here's what you don't do ready you've marinated your chicken you got your skillet nice and hot get a good sear you know already that you're not supposed to move your chicken around the pan so that it'll get like a nice brown color you are so ready and then you take the plastic bag of meat and marinade and you dump the whole thing into your pan

guess what happens all that liquid will take sauteing and pretty brown color right off the table the chicken's just going to steam and bubble and it will not get the color you want now you might be okay with that but just know that dumping the whole thing in to the pan it might not get you the results that you're hoping for ask me how i know that one what you want to do instead here's what you want to do is use tongs you pull each piece out individually let that marinade drip off just a second before you put it in the pan don't crowd your pan so that the liquid that comes out of the meat like off of the meat, it won't create too much steam, and then you'll be all set. Now, can you use the leftover marinade in the bag? Not unless you cook it to boiling for a couple of minutes to get all that

raw meat grossness gone. I generally just discard the whole bag. Again, I don't like dirty dishes, but if it is a really flavorful Asian marinade with lots of great ingredients, you can pour it into a small sauce pan. I'd let it boil for a couple of minutes to get food safe. And it also thickens it a bit because it's reducing and it becomes like a good sauce. Now that's not true of every marinade. Like you probably wouldn't want to do that with a marinade of like olive oil and lemon juice because it would just get weird and kind of fry and not be good for anything. I don't know. That's kind of gross. So nine times out of ten, just toss it. Maybe 99 out of 100. I don't know. Okay. So you know why marinating is so great. You get the main components of what makes one,

like how to build one, salt, fat and acid, and then maybe some extra flavor with herbs and spices. you know the timing of how long a piece of meat can sit in a marinade, and you know the ways you can make the marinade and the meat friends throughout the process. Okay. Now we're going to close up the episode with a couple of my favorite marinade formulas. A great basic, salt, olive oil, lemon juice. I already mentioned that. Add in some black pepper, a red pepper flag for a bit of heat.

You can do a handful of fresh parsley for a little brightness, a sprig of rosemary for like earthiness. you can do a few smashed clothes of garlic to get some garlic flavor. You can do dried herbs like time or Italian seasoning. You can do all of it. Just start with the basics of olive oil, salt, and lemon. And then just build with whatever you have. You can't use too much or too little of anything.

So don't stress. If you're feeling stress, though, because I'm not giving you measurements, because I know that's panic-inducing for some of you, I'm going to walk you through this one, okay? Now, I personally love this marinade for chicken. since chicken needs more of that acid than beef or pork, which usually have way more fat to help them stay tender in the cooking. Now, if I use this olive oil, lemon juice, salt situation for red meat,

I'll cut way back on the lemon juice or maybe even sub in an earthier vinegar, like balsamic. But back to this marinade for the chicken. Let's walk through this. Okay, so you open a pack of chicken breast. You season both sides well with salt more than you think until you get good at it. flip with the tongs if you want to keep your hands clean super easy one pair of tongs you put the chicken in a gallon bag pour in a glugger two of olive oil right just you don't go you don't need to measure it's no

problem squeeze in the juice of like one lemon um you don't have to worry about the seeds because you can just pull them off the chicken when it's time to cook them because remember you're not dumping this as a sauce into a pan and steaming it you're pulling the chicken out individually so if you see a lemon seed just kind of grab it from the outside of the bag, you know? Like you've got chicken and tongs in one, and then you just use the bag to kind of like get the lemon seed off. And then you like mush it all around and you call it done. You've got the salt and the lemon in the olive oil.

Or you can add that smashed garlic. You can add the sprig of rosemary or a handful of the like fresh leafy herbs or a small palmful of dry herbs. If you happen to use a lot of lemon, and not a lot of herbs, the chicken will just taste more like lemon with a hint of herb. No big deal. Or if you have like only half a lemon, but a lot of rosemary, the chicken will taste more like rosemary with just a hint of lemon. Both are great. So don't stress about it. It's not science. It's cooking, even though I realize there is like a lot of science of cooking, but for this case,

for marinating, it doesn't really need to be scientific. You just, you don't know what it's going to be like until you try those different ways. And you might like a real zesty lemon chicken. You might just swimming a little bit. It's all good. It's all going to be good. Don't worry about it. Okay. I also love a really good Asian marinade. It's like my go-to and so many things. Like all the time. You've probably seen you've probably seen this on Instagram many, many times. It works great for chicken, beef, pork, lamb. We've made lamb like three times in my family's existence. But I'm mentioning it in case you eat more of it than we do it still works so my favorite asian marinade starts with salt in the form of soy sauce there's always more soy than anything else then for the fat i'll add a little vegetable oil

or peanut oil to do the work of fat or if i want flavor like extra flavor from the fat i will use sesame oil sesame oil is really strong so just a few drops it will do great but um using up to a couple of tablespoons, it will still have tremendous flavor. It'll just be like really sesame heavy, which is really nice depending on where you want to go with it. And then next comes the acid. Rice wine vinegar is best here. But lemon, lemon juice or like just plain vinegar is fine, like apple cider vinegar or even distilled vinegar if you have to use that. We eat Asian food at least once a week, if not more. So rice wine vinegar gets used a lot and it's totally worth my cabinet space. I just love it. Now, you could stop there. It's so.

soy, sesame oil, and vinegar. Done. But if you want to continue adding flavor, it's nice to add a bit of sweetness to all that strong saltiness and earthiness with sugar, honey, or my personal favorite, Mirren. I use it all the time. And you can get it at regular stores like Target and Walmart and stuff in the international section. It's sweetened rice wine. And it is super lovely to have around. It's more mellow than sugar. and it has like its own flavor, which goes really great with other Asian flavors. What else could you add? You could add fresh garlic, fresh ginger, or both. You could do a handful of cilantro or green onion.

You could do a dried chili for some heat, some Chinese five spice powder. There's so many great flavors to add. But just starting with mostly soy, a few drizzles of sesame oil, and then like a healthy glug of rice wine vinegar will be a delight. and honestly like just whisk that stuff up and taste it like just taste it does it taste good then you're good now I personally almost always add garlic and ginger because like a lot of times I have them and I also love the flavor but I don't stress about it if I don't have them it still tastes great it's no problem and again this particular marinade it works for any kind of meat side note

if you are cooking with ground meat it's better to not make marinate it beforehand because you can't remove enough liquid to get a good sear on the ground meat in the pan. So brown the meat, drain off some fat if you need to, and then add that same marinade that we just talked about, add it to the meat in the last few minutes of cooking to add the flavor without affecting the texture. And if you need to thicken the marinade a little bit, since it's really acting more as a sauce at this point, add a small spoonful of cornstarch to the cold or room temperature marinade. You don't want to add cornstarch to hot things or it just clumps up and it gets gross. It's impossible to like whisk out. So add like a spoonful of cornstarch to your marinade,

whisk it really well until it's like perfectly dissolved and then add it to the skillet of your brown ground meat and it'll be delicious. Okay. And then my third favorite marinade that I use often is kind of like a like a text mix flavored situation. I season the meat beforehand, pork, beef, or chicken with salt. I use a flour. flavorless oil, like vegetable or canola for the fat. And then I do the juice of a couple of limes or even like a lime and an orange for the acid and then a mess of spices to get some flavor, along with some garlic if I think about it. The spices could be like a packet of taco seasoning or just a generous palmful of any combination of like chili powder, cumin, garlic powder,

smoke paprika, cayenne, something like that. Now you might love the flavor of say cumin. So use more of that or just that. Throw in a handful of fresh cilantro or some green onion to add some freshness in there. Again, you cannot mess this up. Start with the basic building blocks and add flavor. Now, if you have a lot of cumin in your marinade, your meat will taste more like cumin than any of the other stuff, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a great thing if you love cumin. Now, if you're feeling weird about this, again, about not measuring, and you're worried, like, some ingredients are going to like scream too loudly. Just don't use one thing and weigh larger proportions than something else.

And when you eat it, pay attention. Pay attention to the taste. Does it taste more of something than you thought it would? File that away for next time and cut back or use more. If you need to write it down, that's good too. It's all going to be okay. I promise it's going to be okay. And you're going to see, you're going to see, as you make marinate

and you don't really measure them, you just kind of eyeball them because it's not going to be bad. If you use like really delicious flavored things and you're building those with the basic building blocks of salt fat and acid, and then you might add some flavor in there if you want to, it's just never going to go wrong for you. I cannot stress this enough.

Just don't dump in a whole container of cayenne and you're going to be fine. I have done that before. I thought it was chili powder. We won't talk about it. Okay. So that's it. You don't need a recipe.

You don't need exact measurements of maranades. mostly because we don't want you to have to like dirty up all those measuring cups, but also because you have different taste buds than I do and you like different flavors. And that is a beautiful thing. You might also be marinating like two pieces of chicken versus eight, which will affect how far your measured marinade stretches. Marinerades are such a great way for you to take low grade risks in the kitchen. Okay, so just again, don't don't dump the entire jar in a bag with like two,

pork chops and it's going to be fine it's all going to be balanced and fine okay um i just want you to try playground not playground play around that would be weird to take a marinade on a playground just start small add one item to bring flavor each time um to that basic formula you know salt fat and acid and before you know it you're going to be like throwing stuff in plastic bags like a champ you're going to be so excited you're not making foods with recipes all the time and you don't they become brainless because marines can be really brainless because you just are dumping. You're dumping into a bag what you already have. And it's like the best thing. I did not know. I did not know that I would have almost 25 minutes worth of marinade content. You guys, what is

happening? All right. If you have any questions about this, I want you to come join me on Instagram. I'm at the lazy genius this Thursday around 1215 Eastern time. I'm always there every Thursday to talk about the podcast episode of that week. So even if you're not listening to this like the week it comes out, if you still go on Instagram this Thursday, I'll be there. So I hope you can come and join me. If you can't make it live, remember that the Instagram lives are available for 24 hours after they're posting. Thank you again for all your encouragement last week. And thanks in advance to those of you who will leave reviews on Apple Podcast this week. I am so grateful for you. So grateful for your support of the show. It just makes me smile and makes me happy to just do episodes every single

week. All right, that is it for today. Thank you for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter. I'm lazy about the things that don't. And Kendra, I'll see you soon. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that, more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, If you don't change it, you think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You.

People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.