This is another of my mother-in-law’s recipes.  I have no idea where she got it, but it’s considered one of the standby family recipes for beef kabob marinade.  The other day I used it on a london broil and it came out great.  I wouldn’t recommend this one for chicken or even pork – it’s a very heavy, rich marinade that would overwhelm lighter meats.  But for beef, venison, buffalo and the like, it’s fantastic.

Here’s the cast of characters: Soy sauce, brown sugar, vegetable oil, garlic, onion tops (or spring onions), ketchup, and a lemon.

I make mine directly into the dish I’m going to use for the marinade. Start by measuring out 1/4 cup of ketchup and 1 tbsp of brown sugar.

Squeeze in the juice of one whole lemon. Don’t worry about seeds since this is just a marinade.

Finely chop your onion tops …

… and add them to the mix.

Crush your garlic clove (really mash it up) and add it to the mix.

Measure out 1/3 of a cup of vegetable oil and add that.

Finally, measure out 3/4 cups of soy sauce and add it.

Then whisk, whisk, whisk until it’s all well blended.

Add your meat to marinade. For smaller chunks like kebab meat, an hour or so will do. For a large london broil or a roast of some kind, 3-4 hours works well. I wouldn’t use this marinade overnight because the strong flavors will totally overwhelm the meat.

Enjoy!
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I love Penzey’s Spices.  They have such an amazing variety of spices and their prices are so good that I can afford to reorder everything I keep on hand about once every 6 months or so.  That means I always have fresh spices available.

My last order I wanted to try the Penzey’s version of Cajun spice.  In my house we’re big fans of Tony Chacherie’s, but the last batch we bought was awfully salty.  So I took a chance with a small jar of the Penzey’s version – and it was a massive WIN.  I’ll be ordering  a much larger jar of this in August when I reorder.

The other thing I love about Penzey’s is that with every order they include a sample of something you’ve never ordered before.  This time they sent me a sample of Shallot Salt, which will also be added to my regular order list.  It’s slightly milder than onion salt, but still with a sharp, full flavor.  I think it would be great in egg salad or added to cole slaw.

I told you that I’d explain the bowlful of garlic from my earlier photo, right? So here it is. This is a nifty little trick I learned from someone on a message board somewhere. See, the thing is I love garlic. I put garlic in just about everything, but I hate chopping and dicing garlic. It’s a fiddly sort of thing to do. Even more, though, I hate grocery store pre-chopped garlic. I just doesn’t have the same flavor. So once a month or so I buy about 6 heads of garlic, peel the cloves, toss them into my Cuisinart Mini Prep and pulse them quickly. Then the whole shebang goes into the freezer and I have instant diced garlic.

I also love this little thing for peeling the cloves:

Then pop into the Cuisinart and pulse about 8-10 times.

Then into a freezer bag and store in the freezer.