The Secret Ingredient For A Spicier Steak Marinade

Along with chopping, seasoning, sautéing, and other essential kitchen skills, there's a very good chance, if you like to cook, that marinating is in your bag of tricks, too. This technique of soaking an item in a liquid blend of flavorful ingredients for a period of time before cooking is almost always a great idea when you're dealing with less pricey cuts of steak, according to Tasting Table recipe developer Christina Musgrave. "Cheaper cuts of steak are best marinated," she says in her recipe for Tenderizing Steak Marinade. "A basic strip steak is always a great candidate for a marinade."

Marinating is a great way to add flavor and moisture to steak, an especially important consideration if you're going to be exposing the meat to the intense heat of a grill. Perhaps you've already tried marinating your steak in a surprising ingredient like Coca-Cola or even mayonnaise, but if your tastes lean toward spicy foods, then you'll want to try Musgrave's marinade recipe — stat.

Other than adding flavor and moisture to the meat, marinades are an excellent tenderizer, taking a steak from chewy to easily sliceable in a short amount of time. According to Utah State University, it's the acidic ingredients in marinades that achieve this task, with items such as wine, vinegar, or citrus juices denaturing the proteins in the meat to make it softer. In the case of Tasting Table recipe developer Christina Musgrave's Tenderizing Steak Marinade recipe, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce work in concert to tenderize cheaper cuts of steak, which can be tough.

This marinade is also an excellent choice for those who like some heat in their meat. "The special ingredient is a pinch of cayenne, which adds just a pinch of spice to the marinade," Musgrave says. Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper round out the tasty marinade, in which your steak should soak for between one and three hours prior to cooking. The result? A tender, flavorful, and lightly spicy piece of meat.