You know how Rachael Ray says to clean your veggies when you get home from shopping?  Well that doesn’t work for me, because although I LOVE the idea of the veggies being all ready to go when I want to use them, I think they start to go bad faster once they are washed and prepped. I don’t do that.  I really like the idea, but I don’t do that.  One thing my husband and I do after shopping that helps with dinner prep though is marinate the meat.  I do not like steak or pork that has not been marinated.  I figured out that this is why I thought I didn’t like steak, often steak in a restaurant has not been marinated it is just seasoned.  I like it to have soaked in the flavor.  So when we bring home steak we make up a bag of marinade and put the steak in it then freeze it.  Marinating the meat seems to add a step to shopping, but helps with preparing dinner.

Sometimes we have a big hunk of meat so my husband trims off the fat and cuts it up and we make some sauce then bag it up.  Sometimes he wants to have steak on hand for his beef stroganoff so he will chop it up in little bite size chunks.  We will put the chunks in a bag of sauce and freeze that.  When we need to use the steak we take it out to defrost and it is already marinated.  It has soaked in the juices while it was freeze and while it is defrosting.  Instead of defrosting THEN marinating, it is doing both at once.  AWESOME.

A little while ago he decided he wanted to do that with pork too.  We don’t buy bone on pork chops, my husband buys the thick chops.  I just remembered a funny story, one day he came home with steak and pork and told me to “make up” x number of bags.  He said some of the bags were for pork and some of the bags were for steak.  Not that he minded, but I could tell the difference when we cooked them he had put the steak in the pork marinade and the pork in the steak marinade.  It turned out ok, just a little different.  We always marinate the steak and we marinate the port most of the time, but sometimes we want to cook it another way so we don’t put it in bag with marinade.

As I was sitting here trying to think of something to post, I was thinking, “I didn’t learn anything this week.”  I know that is not true but I couldn’t think of what I learned so I decided to share something I already knew.  I was smelling the grilling my hubby was doing and it made me think of what a time saver the marinade in the freezer is and I thought, “Huh.  Maybe I could share that.”  So I am.

We use zip lock bags and I put whatever we have on hand in it; sherry/wine, teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, onions, garlic, marjoram, parsley, garlic, whatever.   Then we squeeze out as much air as possible and freeze it until we are ready to use it.  Cool.  I love that.  When I go into the freezer to get out something for dinner and there is meat in there already marinated I am so happy.  I think we should try it with chicken too, what do you think?

I know you can by meat that is already marinated but you never really know what is in those pre-made ones and for me .  . . one who cannot tolerate any kind of spicy heat, they normally are too hot.  This way you are in control of the flavor you get.