Marinades are great for adding flavor to a variety of different dishes, helping to soften foods such as meat, fish, and vegetables.
If you’ve made a delicious marinade, you might be curious to know: Can you use marinade as sauce?
In this article, I will explore some important information about marinade, including whether you can use marinade as sauce.
Let’s get started.
Can You Use Marinade As Sauce?
The short answer is that you can use marinade as sauce, but not always. To get a better understanding of the circumstances when you can use marinade as sauce, there are a few caveats to consider.
The first caveat is contamination. As marinade is often used to soften and flavor raw meat and fish, the raw meat and fish juices therefore contaminate the marinade and make it unsafe for consumption as a sauce as it is.
In the case of using leftover marinade that has already been used with raw meat or fish, the marinade would need to be boiled in order to make it safe to eat as a sauce.
Leftover marinade that has been contaminated by raw meat and fish should never be used as a sauce, as it will make you very sick.
The second caveat to consider is the taste and consistency of marinade. Unlike sauces, marinades are usually quite thin in consistency and also contain a variety of different ingredients such as whole spices and dried herbs that aren’t particularly tasty when they’re consumed as is.
That being said, it’s better to boil your marinade so that it can reduce into a saucy consistency and strain these unappealing ingredients out of your marinade before you use it as a sauce.
Bearing these two caveats in mind, then, marinade should only be used as a sauce when it’s been cooked beforehand.
This will not only improve the flavor of the marinade, it will also make it safe for consumption as a sauce when raw meat and fish are in the equation.
Foodborne bacteria are killed off at 165 degrees fahrenheit, so if you are boiling leftover marinade that has had raw meat in it, make sure that you bear this in mind and have a temperature nearby.
While it’s not necessarily dangerous to eat marinade that hasn’t been contaminated with raw meat or fish juices, it’s not designed to be a sauce, so therefore won’t be the most appealing in taste.
In this circumstance the question isn’t necessarily can you use marinade as sauce, but whether you’d actually want to.
The steps for boiling a marinade couldn’t be simpler. You can use the marinade as it is, or once it has come to temperature, you can taste it and incorporate more ingredients into it.
This is where you can really get creative with turning your marinade into a sauce, and can have a tonne of fun experimenting with it in the kitchen.
How To Boil Marinade
Step One
Add your marinade to a saucepan
To begin, you will need to add your marinade to a saucepan over a medium to high heat.
Step Two
Bring the marinade to a boil
Bring the marinade to a boil, consistently stirring it over the stove with a wooden spoon.
Step Three
Cook until the marinade reduces to the right consistency
Following this, you will need to continue cooking your marinade until it reduces to the right sauce consistency.
This can take quite a while, so just have patience. If you take the marinade off the heat too soon, it will be too thin in consistency.
Step Four
Measure the temperature and remove from heat
You will need to ensure that you cook the sauce until it reaches 165 degrees to kill any foodborne bacteria.
When the marinade has reached a boil and is your desired consistency for sauce, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool.
Step Five
Add your sauce to a bottle
Once your sauce has been allowed to cool, add your sauce to a bottle and you can enjoy it with your favorite recipes!
You can use this sauce in a variety of different ways, and now that you have cooked it, it is safe to use as a dipping sauce.
While this recipe uses the marinade on its own, like I mentioned above, there’s nothing to stop you from adding additional ingredients if you desire.
The great thing about boiling the marinade is that you can alter the recipe and adjust the flavor to make a truly delicious sauce.
Notes On Using Marinade As A Sauce
If you don’t have time or would rather not boil your leftover marinade that has had raw ingredients in it, then the safest option is to throw it out.
While no one likes food waste, it’s much better to be safe than sorry in this circumstance.
You don’t ever want to put yourself at risk of food poisoning, so using marinade that has already been exposed to raw meat or fish juices should be avoided at all costs.
Not only will it not taste very nice, but you could become very ill consuming marinade in this way.
The good news is that boiling your marinade and reducing it down is easy.
That being said, if you’ve got a batch of leftover marinade that you don’t want to waste, just pop it on the stove in a saucepan whilst you’re doing something else in the kitchen.
You can incorporate your marinade into another recipe to create a sauce, or make up your own recipe by using the marinade as a base.
While this is different to using a marinade as it is as a sauce, it is a good way of using up leftover marinade without the need for throwing it out!
In Summary
You can use marinade as a sauce. However, it should always be cooked beforehand, especially when it has been used to marinate raw meat or fish, as you need to kill off any bacteria before it is safe for consumption as a sauce.
Even if your marinade hasn’t been contaminated by raw meat or fish juices, you will want to make sure that you cook the marinade to achieve a better flavor and a sauce consistency.
While you can boil the marinade as it is, you can also add more ingredients to make your desired sauce. Enjoy experimenting in the kitchen with your marinade!
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