It’s a great marriage of fabulous flavours and succulent meat. Nothing infuses wonderful and magical flavours to a piece of meat like a marinade.
It results in an exciting explosion of flavours in your mouth, floods your bloodstream with endorphins and takes you to a state of sensory overload.
The verb “to marinate” used to only apply to fish and the word comes from mare, which is Latin for “the sea.”
Meat was the next thing to be marinated, after fish, when it was discovered that acidic ingredients like citrus juice or vinegar could break down tough sinews in red meat and make it tender.
Chicken is tender in nature, so a marinade is mainly used to add flavour rather than change the qualities of the poultry.
One of the most famous examples is the jerk marinade. This dish has been made in Jamaica for many years. The chicken used to be seasoned with native spices and then smoked, which kept the insects away and preserved the meat.
Now, you can indulge on this wonderful Caribbean Creation through Licious’ Caribbean Jerk Chicken Marinade.
Although many people believe that marinades only date back a couple of hundred years, they have actually been around longer. These liquids have been used since early Egyptian times when Egyptian cooks would prepare their meat for cooking.
Oriental cultures have been marinating their food for centuries and one popular chicken marinade ingredient there is soy sauce.
Soy sauce is used throughout China and Japan, as well as in other Oriental cultures.
There are also references to marinating in the Roman era, when vegetables and other foods would have been marinated to add flavour.
Although marinated vegetables are considered appetizers nowadays, they were often the main event back then. In the early 1800s, something called ‘zakuski’, consisting of marinated vegetables, was served in Russia.
The French have been marinating since the 1300s and the Mexicans have been using papaya to tenderize their meat since before the time of Columbus.
The first marinades were also used to preserve the meat because these were the days before refrigeration.
Marinating poultry would make it last longer without refrigeration. Marinades gained popularity in western cooking during the Renaissance era when people used them on chicken and other meat for preservation and flavour enhancement.
Throughout the course of history, it was discovered that some ingredients could flavour, some could tenderize, and some could perform both of these functions. An acid-based chicken marinade recipe will tenderize your already tender Licious Chicken even more, as well as flavouring it. So that it can literally melt in your mouth.
Pineapple, yogurt, citrus juice, wine, and buttermilk denature the protein strings by unwinding them. This makes chicken really soft. These ingredients also flavour the meat.
Can’t wait to get ‘marinaded’ now? Check out our spanking new KabaLicious marinades. Oozing with flavours and out-of-the-world distinct personalities like the Superstar himself.