marinades

When I make soft tacos I often buy the marinated flap meat at the grocery store. Our regional chain has a couple of really tasty marinades. Sometimes, however, I will make my own marinade. That was the case recently. I bought a London Broil for a Saturday dinner, but I only needed a third of it for that meal. I cut the other two-thirds into two pieces and froze them. One day I pulled out one of the pieces to chop up and marinate.

In looking through the marinades in my recipe database I only had one true carne asada-style marinade and it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Then I saw I had saved an infographic entitled Make a Marinade from the Food Network. That image provided the elements for making your own marinades. Very simple: oil, acid, flavors, and salt. I thought that was very cool in that it in essence gives you permission to innovate and come up with your own creation.

Here’s what I did. For the oil I used olive oil (of course). For the acid I used red wine vinegar and the juice of half a lemon. For flavor I used granulated onion, granulated garlic, hot chili powder, adobo seasoning, and fresh ground black pepper along with a splash of passion/orange/guava juice from Sprouts. As for the salt, I omitted it. You know me. I let the meat marinate for over six hours.

The result was a very flavorful carne asada.

I now know that I can be creative with my marinades.