You can marinate basically any food – although tender, absorptive foods work best. Anything from traditional and crowd-pleasing barbecue meats like chicken, pork, and steak, to more inclusive veggie options like tofu, seitan, mushrooms, or eggplant can be marinated to add flavor! Today, we’ll give you a recipe and a run-down on how to make excellent barbecue marinade, and marinate your food in a reusable, upcycled mason jar!
Why Marinate in a Mason Jar?
Some recipes call for marinating your foods in a plastic bag or bowl, but we’ve found greater success using a glass mason jar. So why should you marinate in a mason jar vs a plastic bag?
- Glass mason jars are impermeable, meaning that they will never leak or leave behind residue.
- With a proper lid, you can guarantee a tight seal on your glass jar, ensuring that your marinade remains free from contamination.
- Minimize cleanup and completely eliminate plastic waste from the process, you can simply run your mason jar through the dish washer and re-use it for decades. Even your great-grandchildren will be able to marinate their foods in the same mason jar that you used!
- Safer storage – If you don’t use all of your marinade in one day, it’s easy to just pop the lid back on the mason jar and toss it in the freezer until you’re ready to use the rest.
- Mason jars come in a variety of sizes, so they’re able to accommodate any amount of marinade, from a single serving, to a family-size barbecue.
Where to Get Mason Jars for Marinade
If you’re looking for the perfect mason jars to marinate your food, you’ve come to the right place. At Jar Store, we’ve got tons of mason jars in all sizes, and we have a few we would recommend. You want to make sure that you have ample room for both your marinade and your food, so we’ll start at 32 oz.
- 32 oz. Jar Store Economy Mayo Jar – With a wide-set body, these mayo jars are able to easily fit both your marinade and food, without overcrowding the jar.
- 32 oz. Anchor Canning Jar with 2 Piece Lid – The wider mouth on these jars makes them easier to fill, empty, and clean, and the included lids are perfect for canning. These are great for marinating, canning, pickling, and more!
- 32 oz. BASCO Jar – Originally from our sister company, BASCO, we decided that these glass jars would be right at home on Jar Store. These glass jars are tall, accommodating, and wide-mouthed, so they fit all of the necessary prerequisites for marinating.
Mason Jar Barbecue Marinade Recipe
A marinade typically includes three main ingredients: an oil, a flavor, and an acid. The acid can be anything acidic, like a vinegar or citrus, the oil is typically olive oil or a similar cooking oil, and the flavor comes from any combination of herbs and spices that you like. The coolest thing about a marinade is that you can experiment with these main ingredients to find what you like best! You can swap out vinegar for lemon juice for a tangier mixture, or try vegetable oil in place of olive oil. The flavor is the most flexible part, you can include more or less of spices and herbs that you enjoy to get a completely different flavor!
We’ll give you a simple marinade recipe that we enjoy, and we hope that you enjoy it too, but feel free to swap some ingredients around! Get creative, but remember that the typical rule of thumb is three-parts oil and one-part acid! The best part about this is that ours is a vegan friendly marinade, so you can use it to marinate veggies or mushrooms as well as meats!
What you’ll need:
- Onion (Either freshly diced, or dried onion flakes work perfectly)
- Salt & Pepper
- Soy Sauce
- Smoked Paprika
- Agave Syrup
- Ketchup
What you’ll do:
- Simply mix all of your marinade ingredients together, straight in your mason jar
- Place your food (chicken, pork, eggplant, or otherwise) into the mason jar and seal the lid, making sure that your food gets evenly coated with the marinade
- Leave the jar in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, flipping the food over or giving the jar a light shake every 30-45 minutes
- Grill, bake, or cook your food on a pan once it’s had some time to get to know all of your flavors!
It’s Really That Easy!
Marinating is a nice and easy way to add a ton of extra flavor and juiciness to your dishes, and it can be made even more effective with glass mason jars!
Did you enjoy our recipe? Let us know! Send us some photos on Instagram or Facebook, or tag us on Pinterest! We love to see our jars put to good use, so we’re super excited to see your homemade mason jar marinade!
