The 1 Thing Guy Fieri Almost Always Does Before Grilling

By Anna Monette Roberts
Dylan Rives | Stringer
Dylan Rives | Stringer

Guy Fieri's secret to grilling success starts with the marinade, as seen in almost all of his top recipes on the Food Network. These particular tips will help you see marinades in a whole new light and will inspire you to try out something new the next time you grill.

  1. Don't waste a drop of your marinade. Guy isn't about wasting one drop of marinade. For his Grilled Tequila Garlic Lime Flank Steak, he recommends marinating the steak in the fridge for two hours, then at room temperature for another 30-45 minutes. While the steak grills, the marinade is transferred to a pot, brought to a boil, strained, and poured over the finished steak. Talk about flavor!
  2. Process the marinade. Despise chopping? Throw all the marinade ingredients in a processor and process until smooth, like Guy does in his Grilled Chicken Tortilla Soup.
  3. Try a quick marinade when you're in a time crunch. Don't have time to let the meat soak up the marinade? No worries! In Guy's Grilled Drunken Shrimp Tacos recipe, the shrimp get tossed and coated in the marinade before being skewered and grilled.
  4. Marinate salmon. It only takes 30 minutes to one hour to marinate salmon, as seen in this Salmon Gyros recipe. The best part is you probably already have all the ingredients at home: garlic salt, lemon zest, and lemon juice are the essentials.
  5. Try yogurt as a marinade. Freshly toasted and ground spices and yogurt are the key ingredients in a lamb marinade for Grilled Tandoori.
  6. Brine a pork loin chop. While not technically a marinade, the flavorful brine called for in Stuffed Double-Cut Pork Loin Chops transforms a regular old pork chop into something filled with sage, mustard, and garlic flavor. The trick is slitting a pocket into each chop to allow those flavors to get into every crevice.
  7. Balsamic glaze your veggies. All vegetables, whether root veggies or Summer squash and zucchini, benefit from marinating in a sweet balsamic glaze, as evidenced in his Balsamic Grilled Vegetables recipe.