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Guy Fieri [1]'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.
- 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 [2], 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!
- 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 [4] recipe, the shrimp get tossed and coated in the marinade before being skewered and grilled.
- Marinate salmon. It only takes 30 minutes to one hour to marinate salmon, as seen in this Salmon Gyros [5] recipe. The best part is you probably already have all the ingredients at home: garlic salt, lemon zest, and lemon juice are the essentials.
- 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 [7] 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.
- 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 [8] recipe.