Your Grilled Chicken's Marinade Deserves Special Attention

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are a great source of lean protein and they also cook up pretty quickly, but they generally aren't as flavorful as the ones with the skin left on and bones still inside. This, however, can be compensated for with a tasty marinade. Most meat marinades consist of three essential components, these being fat, salt, and acid, and recipe developer Maren Epstein sticks to this basic formula with a few added embellishments of her own for the one she uses in her grilled chicken recipe.

The acid in Epstein's marinade comes in the form of orange juice (she prefers to squeeze her own, of course), while the salt comes in the form of an unpasteurized Japanese soy sauce called nama shoyu. For fat, she opts for olive oil, while she flavors the marinade with a complex blend of fennel, garlic, honey, onions, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. The resulting marinade is more sweet than sour, not only due to the honey but the fact that oranges are one of the less-acidic members of the citrus family. It also has some green and herbal notes, pungency from the garlic and onions, and a hint of licorice from the fennel.

Many cooks, including Epstein, prefer to toss out the marinade after it's done its job of marinating the chicken. Doing so is erring on the side of caution because uncooked chicken marinade can harbor bacteria from the raw meat, but it's a mistake to think that chicken marinade can't be repurposed. If you want to reduce food waste in your kitchen, you may be pleased to know that no lesser authority than the USDA suggests a way to make that marinade safe for re-use.

In order to re-use the soy-orange marinade from Epstein's recipe — or the marinade from any other meat recipe, for that matter — you will need to transfer it to a pot on the stove and bring it to a boil. It's best to let it boil for at least five minutes, too, to be sure that any harmful bacteria are killed off. Once the marinade has been boiled for a sufficient amount of time, you may then use it as a glaze or a sauce for the meat or add some additional ingredients to turn it into a gravy. If the boiled marinade is too thick for your intended purpose, you can always thin it out with water, chicken broth, or, in the case of Epstein's marinade, an extra squirt of orange juice.