Easy chicken marinade

An easy chicken marinade recipe, great for chicken kebabs, drumsticks, BBQ wings and grilled chicken. Easy to make, this chicken marinade is straightforward and doesn't require any fancy ingredients.

I have always believed in marinating your own meat. Basically, the skeptic in me says that if I was a butcher, I would present my best cuts of meat to the public as is, then once things started getting a bit old and smelly, I'd cover the meat with marinade and put it back on the shelf again.

This may or may not happen in reality, but I'm not going to take that chance. Besides, marinades from most butchers are straight up boring, and are made from a gross looking powder - there's only so much honey-soy or sweet-chili marinated meat you can handle.



Luckily, marinating your own is pretty straightforward. It takes less than 10 mins, and the only downside is that you need to be organised and start the marinade several hours before dinner.

You can mix and match the marinade out of ordinary household ingredients. I like to use plenty of olive oil, so the meat is self-lubricating on the BBQ plate.

Suggested ingredients

• 1 cup white wine - don't use your flash stuff
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 small onion
• a couple of fresh chilies (optional)
• a dash of white wine vinegar
• Juice of 1 - 2 lemons
• salt and pepper to season

Put it together

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, and stir. Add the chicken. You can alternatively transfer everything into a zip-lock bag as this requires less liquid to cover the chicken.


Experts recommend marinating chicken for approx 4 hours, though I sometimes leave it overnight so it's less work on the day.

Tags: chicken marinade bbq chicken recipes

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