Making your own Marinade
Marinades are very useful for cooking. I am going to explain how I make marinades (usually for tofu and various vegetables (mostly cucumber)), and how you can make marinades for your desired dishes without fearing yuck food. This is less of a recipe more like a guide.
Taste
Everything you eat has taste. Why use a marinade? It makes the food taste good. You infuse the food with flavour before you cook or eat it. Food like tofu doesn't have much flavour on its own (and in my opinion a kind of gross taste), but absorb flavour through marinating. For foods like steak, while they have their own taste, a marinade can compliment its flavour profile to make it that much better.
The 5 tastes, as seen in the above image (courtesy of the Umami Information Centre), are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. To give a brief explaination on each;
- Sweet is the nice sugary taste, like honey, fruit, candy and carrots. Yummy. Despite being the big bad in my childhood, sugar is actually very important to our culinary experience. Why? Because its sweet!
- Sour is the acidic taste, like lemons, TNT candy, and the universal face wrinkler. To counter sweetness in a dish, we add sour.
- Salty is the taste of the mineral salt, like in chips or preserved foods (which use salt as a preservative). Salt is also a flavour enhancer, which is why "a pinch of salt" is so ubiquitous.
- Bitter is sharp pungent and immediate, like coffee, unripe fruit extra dark chocolate, and the brassica veg family. I'm personally not a fan of large quantities, but it can service other tastes.
- Umami is that savoury, fermented, meaty taste, like aged cheese, fish, soy sauce, or mushrooms.
There is also those tastes that aren't actually tastes, but more-so reactions, like spicy (peppers, chilli, etc make your mouth feel hot), cooling (mint for instance makes your mouth feel cold), and astringent (tingly and drying, like cranberries, sprouts, some tea). As an aside on astringent, every time I go to yum cha I make the same, repeated, mistake of adding cold water to my leftover green tea leaves which sit at the bottom of my cup. This always, without fail, produces a disgusting, astringent blend which I have no choice but to drink so as to refill my cup with good tea and to remind myself not to do this the next time I go to yum cha.
The thing about good food is that it's flavour is made up of a whole mix up of tastes, so that you have amazing food. While I like to eat plated salt and sugar granules coated with citric acid msg and coffee powder as much as the next guy, its slightly more complicated than that. Of course there's more than just taste, there's temperature, smells, looks, feels, texture etc. That's more personal, in my opinion. We're built to know that sweet food is safe and bitter food is probably not safe, but we have preferences, both individual and cultural. You might think ow hot get out of my mouth, I might think mmm yummy hot food.
TLDR; When we make a marinade, we are adding flavours we like to food to make it something we like more. This taste paragraph may have strayed too far from the concept of marinades. But really, that's what it is. Flavours -> food = good.
Ingredients
For tasty marinades there are a few basic things you'll wanna have at hand in your pantry to give those marinades that flavour. Here's a list which will hopefully cover most recipes needs and the basic flavours you'll want.
Sauces:
- Soy Sauce
This gives the marinade a salty and umami flavour. Most recipes call for light soy, which you should not mix up with dark soy, which is thicker and sweeter than it's salty brother.
- Honey
Honey is good for sauces, as it is sweet, but mixing it in can be a pain if it's not runny, so i usually microwave it first.
- Vinegar
Vinegar is sour, and also very yummy. I'd recommend having both balsamic and rice, although apple cider is also very popular (it is also often used for cleaning)
- Fish sauce
If you're vegan skip this one, but fish sauce is very important for many SEA dishes as it provides a great salty umami fishy flavour, as it is, well, fermented fish.
- Worcestershire
Amusingly my autocorrect could fix this, but did not recognise umami. Worcestershire sauce is umami and sweet, essentially the British soy sauce, with a bit more going on and the addition of fish. I don't actually have a fish sauce right now so I add some of this sometimes to substitute.
- Sriracha
My favourite hot sauce, red and garlicy, and not too spicy. (sidenote sriracha, soy, and kewpie mayo are great for rice dishes).
- Chilli bean sauce
Used often in SEA dishes, this sauce is thick spicy and fermented. I actually don't have any atm, will update this point in future to share how to use it well.
Oils
Oils are flavour carriers, extending your sauce without watering it down or breaking it up. They cook at high temperatures, so they can cook your food in that flavour without evapourating off and burning up.
- Neutral Oil
Neutral oils, such as canola or sunflower have little to no discernible flavour. Be mindful when using neutral oils and cooking for others that they have no food allergies, as neutral oils can contain seeds and nuts that are common allergies, such as peanut oil.
- Flavoured Oils
I like to use sesame oil for East Asian inspired marinades, and because I'm a cheapskate I go for the blended mix to get the best of both black and white sesame seeds. Olive oil is used for many western marinades, and can be used just on its own for salads and whatnot. Chilli oil is an oil infused with the spice so that you don't need to add it, or rather its deeply embedded into your marinade.
^Of course there are many flavoured oils, these are just some prevalent ones.
Seasonings
- Garlic
I don't know how to explain garlic, its good. Some people don't like garlic, and those people are tragic. Minced garlic is great but garlic powder is good to have handy too, if especially if you aren't looking for a textured marinade.
- Ginger
- Spring onion
This onion is greener and milder than other onions, and you can chop up the whole length to add to your food, barring the roots. You can also grow them back from their roots, so you can always have some around. In NZ we are weird, if a recipe calls for green onions/scallions, use spring onions.
- sesame seeds
These have a great mild nutty taste, and I would totally recommend them for SEA style marinades. For extra flavour, toast them on medium pan with no oil for 2-3 minutes or until fragrant. This will accentuate the flavour and give them a great crunch.
- Chilli flakes
Perfect for adding spice, and also looks good presentation wise.
- Sugar
It's sweet.
- Lemon
Classic sour, can be used in place of vinegar if you haven't got sourness in your sauce.
- Sichuan pepper
This is a unique spice, it has a citrus-y flavour, but its most interesting affect is a sort of numbing effect on your tongue. It's great with chilli, I'd definitely recommend it.
- Spices
There are far too many spices to even have a "basics" list to explain. So quickfire of some that show up often in marinade recipes;
-Parsley
-basil
-black pepper
-white pepper
-salt
-paprika
-cumin
-garlic/onion powder
-cayenne
You should definitely get spices but these are some basics.
Following the Recipe
When I was a kid first getting an instrument (a ukulele for those curious) my brother told me that I'd have to learn to play songs before I could write my own. Same goes for cooking. Trying out different marinades as a baseline is good so as to know what you like.
Here are three different marinade recipes:
1. Best Steak Marinade in Existence
2. Cold Tofu with Spicy Chilli Sauce
3. Marinated Tofu (The Best Tofu Ever!)
Now you can of course use any recipe you want when cooking, but these examples are useful in that all three (mostly) use ingredients I've listed, and use them in different quantities for different purposes. And also the same purpose. Food is all about preference.
My advice? Follow a random internet recipe, and tweak it. If you think it should be sweeter, add sugar? Not a fan of garlic? You don't have to add it. Do it a bunch, eyeball it, make gross food and learn. Once you have an idea of the ratios of flavours you like, you can make marinades without any thought.
Closing thoughts
I definitely am not qualified to write this, but I am a stranger on the internet so whatever. If anyone ever wanted my recipe for a marinade, I'd just make one up on the spot. If that's not your style, I don't blame you. I do not have the blind confidence to bake freehand. However, I very much encourage you, reader, to make and change your marinades. At worst, you have to start again. At best, you have an amazing dish.
Sources:
meeow. Not all of this was from my bulging brain or fingers. Here is where I got a lot of my information and also the image :3
How to Save Food: Fixing Flavours this is how you fix your food, I knew this stuff (kind of) but this post goes into it more.
What are neutral oils? neutral oil info
what is umami image source and also more info on tasty food