Marinating your meat.

Are you ready for some BBQ?! Yes it is finally that time of the year. I know some of you have been bbqing for a while now but it is slow to warm up here in Atlantic Canada. We are at the point now where it's still perfect, warm but not yet hot. Some call it spring...we call it lucky. Typically we go from cold and rainy to full on hot. Spring is not an Atlantic Canadian season. Now Fall, that we get, in spades. The Fall is amazing here. Come, visit, see, do, it's fantastic! But I digress.

I wanted to talk about bbqing. Last night I did some steaks on the barbie at my mom's. It can be hard when using a strange grill to get them just like you like them. Ours were a little overdone. However, they weren't dry or tough because we had marinated them in some Worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar and Ms. Dash grilling seasoning overnight. Mom mentioned that she never plans ahead to get that much marinating time on her meat before it hits the bbq. Most of us don't.

So here's a simple solution. Put your meat in the marinade before you freeze it! Then as it freezes and defrosts all those great flavours are getting into the meat. And if you use an acid, like fruit juice, vinegar, etc (wine may impede the freezing process so use only a little) the meat fibers will be nice and tender when they hit the grill. I do this a lot in the summer time with beef, pork, lamb and chicken. You have to be more careful with fish since it take marinades quickly. I just leave fish and seafood out of this freeze ahead marinate process. 20 minutes in a marinade is enough for fish or seafood to get infused with flavor and you don't risk cooking the fish or seafood before hitting the bbq with the acid in the marinate. Easy!