Marinating Your Meat For Better Flavour

I agree that one of the best things about living in Australia is that you can come home and throw a couple of chops on the barbie and have a meal in very short time. However, with a little preparation a few hours ahead you can improve the flavour and texture of this meal ten-fold.

If you're a hard-core griller who's motto is catch it - kill it - grill it - eat it - I understand as I spent many years living by that approach as well.

One night I shared camp with an old prospector who had shot a kangaroo that morning and had been marinating a leg in a 50:50 mixture of vinegar and cheap red wine, with a lot of salt and pepper.

He then roasted it in an enormous camp oven and shared the meal with me. I couldn't believe the improvement of flavour over all the kangaroo I'd eaten before.

I was converted.

A good marinade contains flavorings, spices, herbs, and because a marinade is acidic, it unravels the proteins at the meat surface and carries the marinade flavors into meat.

Of course it can only travel so far, so marinating a thick roast will not get the added flavor you would get with a thin cut, but it is still beneficial.

There is a growing trend, coming out of the USA, to inject marinade into larger cuts of meat prior to BBQing.

Poultry and pork benefit more from injecting than beef and lamb does. Haven't tested it on kangaroo yet.

The injecting process is very simple. You need a special syringe that has holes in side of the needle to prevent clogging. You also need a liquid marinade to inject and then do so in several of the thickest, meaty parts of the cut that you are intending to cook. These marinade injectors are at most good kitchen equipment suppliers and many on-line stores.

OK, here are a few points about marinades that you need to know before you use them - nothing complex, more of a 'heads up';

Marinades typically contain some kind of oil and olive oil is my personal favorite. The oil serves to hold in moisture on meats and to reduce the moisture loss during cooking by healping seal the outside surface.

Cooking meats over a direct flame can result in heterocyclic amines (HCA)'s being created. These potentially cancer-causing agents can be reduced by, as much at 99% when foods are marinated in an acidic marinade, according to the American Cancer Research Institute.

However, the big health risk with marinades is when people take the meat out of the marinade, put it on the grill, and then use the remaining marinade as a baste. This can make you very sick as you are putting the bacteria from the raw meat (and all meat has them) onto the cooked meat.

To avoid the problem above, simply make a little extra marinade and put it aside, before you put the marinade on the meat. Then when you are cooking, use the marinade you kept aside as the baste. This way there is no cross-contamination.

As an extra safety measure, as soon the meat in on the barbecue, tip out the marinade that it was in - it's done it's job and is not really any good for anything else anyway.

Lastly, don't let food sit in marinades for too long. Meat marinated for too long can become soft and mushy, not something you would want to serve.

Nigel publishes a FREE monthly newsletter covering all aspects of BBQ equipment, techniques, tools and ingredients. You can subscribe at [http://www.bbq-down-under.com/bbq-newsletter.html]

Nigel Laubsch has been experimenting with BBQ cooking techniques for over 25 years. Much of his experience was gained travelling through Indonesia, Thailand, China and Fiji. He now enjoys showing others how to grow, use and appreciate chillies and in 2005 presented the world's first Chili Sauce Appreciation course at the University of Western Australia and has received rave reviews for the innovative content.

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