This is the world's best and most versatile meat marinade flavoring and tenderizing steak, pork, chicken, and wild game. The seasoning infuses the meat with taste while keeping it juicy and tender.
Jump to:
❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
- Easy to make, use, and keep on hand!
- Flavors all meats including wild game, poultry, pork, and beef.
- Can use it for grilling or cooking meat indoors.
- Tenderizes the meat while seasoning it.
Make a double or triple batch and keep the all-purpose marinade in the refrigerator to use on all of your meats.
🛒 Ingredients
Note: For the exact measurements, please refer to the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
- Olive oil: adds fat to the meat so it doesn't dry out.
- Soy Sauce: adds salt and lots of flavor.
- Garlic: is part of the seasoning.
- Light brown sugar: balances the acid and the salt plus it helps to caramelize the meat
- Worcestershire sauce: an umami flavor that blends well with the soy sauce.
- Tabasco Chipotle Hot Sauce (or your favorite hot sauce): infuses the sauce with smoky heat.
- Dijon mustard (or your favorite spicy brown mustard): flavors the meat plus helps to keep the oil and liquids emulsified.
- Apple cider vinegar: the acid that helps to tenderize and flavor.
- Red pepper flakes: gives the meat a bit of heat.
- Black pepper: adds to the taste and heat.
🗒 Instructions
Note: This is an overview of the instructions. The full instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Place all of your ingredients in a medium glass bowl or the glass bowl of a blender.
- Using an immersion blender, mix the marinade until well blended. If using a blender, mix until blended.
- Store the marinade in a glass jar with a lid in the refrigerator. The marinade is best made ahead of time for the flavors to meld but you may use it right away.
- We recommend using resealable bags for marinating and allowing the mixture to marinate the meat in the refrigerator for at least two hours.
- Since the marinade contains an acid, never marinate in an aluminum container. The acid will react with the metal. Use glass, ceramic, stainless steel, or plastic containers.
🔪Equipment
The following are affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
You'll need the following items to make this recipe successfully.
- Immersion Blender
- Sharp knife
- Medium glass bowl
- Measuring spoons
- Liquid measuring cup
- Glass jar with lid
👩🏻🍳Tips
The perfect formula for a marinade is:
- 1 part acid.
- 3 parts fat or oil.
- Seasonings of your choice.
Acidic marinades can toughen chicken if you leave the poultry in liquid too long. Less than two hours is best plus a bit more olive oil.
EXPERT: You need to completely immerse the meat in the marinade. Usually, ½ cup of liquid marinade for every 1 pound of meat will suffice. If you can't completely immerse the meat, turn it over occasionally in the marinade.
🥫Storage
Store the marinade in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid in the refrigerator. It will keep for over a week.
Discard the marinate that was in contact with the meat. If you wish to use the marinade as a sauce. Let the liquid come to a boil then simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. The best solution is to make enough marinade that you are able to set some aside before you marinate the meat.
FAQs
These are questions we're asked about marinades.
There are 3 types:
Acidic: Has a base of wine, vinegar, or high acidic juices such as tomato or citrus.
Enzyme: Papain or bromelain, found in fruits such as kiwi, papaya leaves or fruit, and pineapple.
Dairy: Calcium has a tenderizing effect. Buttermilk and Yogurt is also acidic which is an additional benefit.
By immersing the meat in the liquid seasoned marinade. Depending on the type of meat and thickness, the for marinating will vary.
🍽 Serve with . . .
Italian Summer Salad is fresh and crisp and you can make it ahead of time while you're busy grilling.
Antipasto Caprese Salad is delicious and a wonderful start to any summer meal. This only takes 5 minutes to put together so do it while the meat is resting.
Panzanella Salad or Italian bread salad is a welcome side with any summer meal. Make it ahead and toss with dressing before serving.
Ramen Broccoli Slaw is a fantastic switch from regular salads. The noodles add a delightful crunch to the slaw.
😋 Variations
The main ingredients in a marinade is the oil and acid. But if you wish to experiment there are many variations you can try.
- Instead of the olive oil base, try truffle, peanut, sesame, walnut, grape, or chile oil. You can also use milk, coconut milk, buttermilk, or yogurt. Buttermilk and yogurt is excellent to use with chicken.
- Instead of apple cider vinegar, try wines, beers, balsamic and flavored vinegars, lemon or lime juice, yogurt.
- The seasonings are wide open going from Asian flavored to Italian and Mexican. Use fresh or dried herbs, spices, and chile peppers. Also onions, shallots, garlic, ginger, and citrus zest. Experiment with prepared condiments such as mustard, ketchup, chili sauce.
📚 Related Recipes
Grilled London Broil uses a variation of the all-purpose meat marinade to make a steak that is tender, juicy, and flavorful.
Grilled Marinated Venison is fork tender and the meat rivals the best beef you've ever eaten. The marinade seasons the meat but doesn't mask the delicious taste.
Pork Kebabs are marinated first and then grilled. They're quick and easy to cook and always turn out perfectly.
📞Chiacchierata (Chat)
We love using marinades! They give the meat such intense flavor without any effort. And the bonus is that is also tenderizes the meat.
Our son, the hunter, gifts us with delicious cuts of game meat. Every time we've ever grilled or broiled the meat, whether it was venison, elk, or antelope, the meat was tasty and tender like the most expensive dry-aged beef.
So, it's no more dry rubbery meats for you!
Start off with this tasty all-purpose marinade then experiment with different flavors. I know that you'll end up agreeing with us that this is by far the best marinade base for all of your meats.
📝Recipe
If you love this recipe, pleas give it 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
📖 Recipe
The World's Best All-Purpose Meat Marinade
Equipment Needed
Ingredients
- ⅔ cup olive oil
- ⅔ cup soy sauce
- 10 garlic cloves minced
- 6 tablespoon light brown sugar
- 4 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 4 tablespoon hot sauce
- 2 tablespoon dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar *** see notes
- 2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Add all of the ingredients to a medium size glass bowl.
- Using an immersion blender, blend all of the ingredients together.
- Pour the marinade into a glass jar and screw on the lid. Let the flavors meld in refrigerator overnight.
- When ready to use, place the meat in a zip lock bag. Pour enough of the marinade over the meat so that it is covered with the seasoning.
- Marinate for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours. The longer it marinates, the better the seasoning penetration.
- If you're marinating chicken, marinate under 2 hours. The texture of the meat does not do well with long marinates in acidic liquids such as vinegars or citrus.
Notes
Nutrition
Sign up for the emails and never miss another recipe!!
We'll never share your email or send you spam. Promise
Moop Brown
I love how versatile this marinade is and that it can go with a wide variety of different dishes.
Enriqueta E Lemoine
What I like the most about this tasteful marinade is that I can keep it in the fridge for a week! Thanks for the recipe: it makes miracles!
Kate
Love the ingredient combination! This marinade made our meat so flavorful and is certainly now one of our favorite recipes.
Heidy
This versatile meat marinade was delicious--- we tried it on a few things when we had a bbq. I always cringe when I see titles such as the best etc., on blog posts because most of them are nowhere close to the claim, but I was pleased with your recipe, and so were the people attending our BBQ! Great recipe, and we will be using it again! Thank you, and have a wonderful day!
Marie
This is such a useful, informative, mouth-watering post Marisa! The marinade does looks amazingly versatile and your grilled meats look so juicy. This is all making me hungry! I know what we'll be having for dinner tonight 😍
Liz
I've been having so much fun playing with flavors and seasonings si this marinade recipe will be a fun one to use all summer long!
Katie Crenshaw
This marinade is so flavorful. It is a great way to jazz up plain grilled chicken into tasty and juicy.
Sharon
To get through grilling season, an all-purpose marinade is a must to have and this one delivers every time.
Farrukh Aziz
This is so delicious! I love grilled meat (especially chicken), and this is perfect for me! And since I can store it, I made loads of it to store for further use! 🙂
Lauren Michael Harris
This is a great marinade recipe to keep on hand! It can be whipped up in a pinch and the perfect way to add a ton of flavor to dinner!
Loreto and Nicoletta
I always marinate my protein. Your so right when you say it tenderize the meat yet adds so much flavor. I love the combination of the brown sugar, soy sauce and acid from the vinegar and mustard. I can just taste that with a nice ribeye so tender and mind blowing flavor! Thanks for sharing!🙏❤👍👌🥰😛
Gloria
This time of year is all about grilling. Meat marinade is a must for the perfect steak. I will pass this along to hubby.....he is the grill master in our house.
Dee | Grammy's Grid
Lots of yummy ingredients. Thanks so much for linking up with me at the Unlimited Link Party 28. Pinned!
Deb
Delicious! Five stars here, this really adds a ton of flavor to beef. Thank you!