Sweet and Spicy Ginger Marinade

It looks like I won’t stop posting marinade recipes anytime soon. I hope you don’t mind because I certainly don’t! This one had a bit of a tough start. This is neither strictly my recipe nor Stefan’s but a co-production. I started and when I hit a wall he came to my rescue and provided the finishing touches. I see it like in the end it got the best of both worlds. When I think about it this is in many ways actually!

It’s got both my AND Stefan’s genius mastermind marinade making talent, it is a little sweet AND a little sour, it is spicy AND creamy and it combines the superpowers of ginger AND garlic!

Speaking of ginger and garlic, in my books, this is a match made in heaven. I love the flavor of both but combined they just provide the right kick to make a good meal to a fantastic one. And in terms of health benefits you know that each of them alone seem to be the Wolverine of herbs but combining them it’s like you have the whole fucking X-Men’s superpowers on your plate. If you’re interested you can find a little more sophisticated information about the health benefits of both here for example.

Well this is all good and nice but ultimately I’ll share this recipe with you because the marinade is damn delicious and I made it already three times this year!

Print Recipe

Sweet and Spicy Ginger Marinade

Author: Juli

Ingredients

• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 Thai chili
• 1 piece of ginger ~ size of a female aka my thumb
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 T Worcestersauce
• 1 T molasses

Instructions

• Preheat the oven and grill the chili until the skin forms bubbles, goes black and you can peel it off easily - set aside and let cool slightly. Depending on your tolerance of spice and the spicyness of the chili remove the seed. DON'T TOUCH YOUR EYES (I do it all the time)
• In the meantime give the garlic, lemon juice and 1 T olive oil in a mortar or narrow mixing bowl and pestle or mix until you have a pale white and smooth mixture
• Chop and add the ginger and 1 T olive oil and repeat
• Now add the chili, Worcestersauce and molasses and blend again until everything is well combined and you have a smooth marinade.

Notes

For this recipe, as well as almost all my marinades I recommend to use a mortar or hand-held blender. If you follow this step by step instructions the marinade turns out much smoother and creamier and less chunky in my experience. If you don't care you can just thow everything in a food processor and blend until smooth. But it gets way creamier when you follow the above description.
To marinade the meat I always use a freezer bag. I pour all the marinade in a large bag, add the meat and let marinade at room temperature for 1 h or in the fridge up to 24 h.
This marinade goes along just perfect with this Mango Satay Sauce
This recipe is single-serving. It's for 1 large chicken or 1 medium turkey breasts!
Making this marinade with a mortar and pestle equals a medium arm workout. win-win 😉

When I first wrote down the list of ingredients I was deliberating whether I should really post this or not. It just sounds like a nutty experiment by a 5-year-old playing cooking. But then, hey it’s a bit strange but really good. So put another way: It’s perfect!

So I am linking up with Laura today to share and spread the love for being brave in the kitchen!

Thank God it’s Friday! I am jazzed and I need the weekend for recharging the batteries and for my next eating-through-the-archives-WIAWproject. I’ve already chosen my next ‘victim’ and I’ve also already picked out the recipes I want to make. Good times!

Have a good and hopefully short Friday and a wonderful weekend