All Purpose Marinade
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This all-purpose marinade recipe is so easy to make using just 5 ingredients and is ready in under 5 minutes. It tastes absolutely scrumptious on basically everything, from grilled chicken to burgers to veggies.
With summer here, many of us are marinating meat and grilling out on a regular basis. Burgers, chicken, chops, steaks, fish, veggies, you name it, a good marinade can make the meal. There are two marinades often used in my neck of the woods that aren’t readily available everywhere else. These are Dale’s Sauce and Moore’s Marinade, which are both made in Alabama. They are the key ingredient in many of the meats I cook as well as my steak sandwiches.
Here is my homemade all-purpose marinade recipe that can be whipped up in the time it takes for you to gather the ingredients from your pantry. It isn’t spot on the same as what you get in the store, but you’ll find it similar enough and equally delicious on EVERYTHING.
A general marinade is generally good on all things. This can also be made right when you need it or ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator. I sure do hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Recipe Ingredients
- Apple cider vinegar
- Soy sauce
- Liquid smoke
- Ground ginger
- Garlic powder
How to Make All Purpose Marinade
Place your soy sauce in a bowl or large jar.
I like to use this jar because it has measurements on the side and you can just put the lid on and shake it away when you get all of your ingredients in. You can also easily store it in the fridge in this.
Add your water…
Then the garlic powder…
Ground ginger…
And apple cider vinegar.
If you have it, add a wee bit of liquid smoke too.
There ya go! Now put your lid on…
And give it a good shake.
Wasn’t this easy?
Cooking with All Purpose Marinade
Now put some type of meat in a baking dish. Today I’m going to use skinless boneless chicken breast.
Pour the marinade all over the chicken. Let the chicken breasts marinate for at least 30 minutes.
After your meat is done marinating, cook or grill it however you normally would.
In this instance, I covered my baking dish in foil and baked it at 350 for 30 minutes (or until the chicken was done in the center).
Today I’m serving my marinated chicken with mashed potato, fresh green beans, and homemade biscuits.
Storage
Store the all purpose marinade in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Recipe Notes
- If you can’t find liquid smoke, feel free to leave that out. I don’t want you to go fretting all over because it will be just fine without it. Liquid smoke is an all-natural way to give your meat a wee bit of smoky grilled flavor.
- You can totally substitute the garlic powder for 1 minced garlic clove if you like.
- For , add 1/4 of cayenne pepper.
- Here are some suggested marinating times:
- Most meat (chicken, beef, lamb, and pork) can marinate from 30 minutes up to 2 days.
- Vegetables can marinate from 30 minutes up to 5 days.
- Seafood should marinate for no longer than an hour.
Recipe FAQs
Can I marinate frozen chicken?
Yes you can. Either marinate the chicken as it thaws in the fridge overnight. Alternatively, place the fresh chicken in a freezer bag with the marinade and place it in the freezer. Then the marinade will do its thing while the meat is defrosting in the fridge.
What do I marinate in all purpose marinade?
You can marinate basically any meat or vegetable in this all purpose marinade recipe. Here are some suggestions to start:
- Steak kabobs or chicken kabobs, both baked in the oven.
- Steak or steak sandwiches.
- Grilled like salmon.
- Grilled chicken tenders (no grill needed). Basically, any type of poultry will work, like chicken drumsticks, chicken wings, and chicken thighs.
- Your favorite veggies, like potato, cauliflower, onion, and sweet potato.
- Grilled pork chops or pork tenderloin.
Ingredients
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 1 cup water
- ½ tsp liquid smoke, optional
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake to mix well.½ tsp garlic powder, 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 tbsp ground ginger, 1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup water, ½ tsp liquid smoke, optional
- Marinate beef in the mixture for 30 minutes or more. After marinating, discard the used marinade. Store unused marinade in the refrigerator.
- For beef kabobs, after threading the marinated steak onto wooden skewers alongside the vegetables, I place them on a rimmed baking sheet and bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. Turn them every 10 minutes until vegetables are lightly brown around the edges.
Nutrition
A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining,
the breeze is blowing,
the birds are singing,
and the lawn mower is broken.
– James Dent
A few weeks ago, I used my last bottle of Moore’s and it was such a sad, sad day. No other store-bought marinade in Missouri could compare or had gluten in them (Moore’s is gluten-free which makes my belly very happy). We have seriously considered ordering in bulk off of Amazon!! haha We really do use it a lot.
I’m going to give this recipe a try – using Tamari sauce to make it gluten-free.
Can’t wait.
Thanks so much.
I hope you like it Mary!! Let me know once you get a chance to try it.
Christy, you don’t know how awesome your blog is to me! For the past 7 years since I got married I have been trying to become a cook. I grew up with really good food, but I was lucky to always have someone to cook for me. I am blind and my mom did not like me in the kitchen. A few years back I got a health issue and now I have to cook really healthy and from scratch. I try on and off to become a cook, but usually i get so sick of the long time it takes me and the stress that it is that I give up and then I try again. I have searched in the net for all kinds of recipes and I see all this people that knows how to cook convert, invent and change recipes successfully and I never understand why I cannot. 3 months ago I moved to a new state with my husband and I know very few people and I have nobody to cook for me and eating out makes me sick after a while. So tonight I was feeling down and ready to learn how to make something decent in the slow cooker. but after an hour I found several recipes that had always something I could not eat. every time I have tried to change a recipe it taste so bad that I can never eat and then I get even more discouraged. But wen I found your tomatoless recipe and this sauce, it was like a miracle. I learned a new sauce I can use in other things, I didn’t have to worry of how to deal with the lack of liquid smoke and I laughed so hard, like nobody in the net ever managed to make me laugh. I feel happier and I am doing this recipe tonight! People always tell me how easy it is but nobody could ever teach me any stuff or what I am doing wrong to make my recipes work. but you do make it sound like a no brainer and you answer all my questions before I even start it. You have also turn a hope inside me that I never felt before. Maybe someday I will be able to do like bill, but not just in store but in restaurants saying. “yea yea, I am happy, I am healthy and I did it all on my own and without having to eat the
salty unhealthy food you charge me a lot for. hahaha” Thank you, thank you, thank you for this blog.
Rachel, you have made my day beyond anything you could ever imagine. It thrilled me to know that you have received such a blessing from my little ol website and are learning how to cook on your own. I hope all your dishes turn out great and I hope I see here over and over again!! ~HUGS~ to you and thank you so much for such a sweet comment that brightened my day!!
I made my household-famous beef jerky using this recipe, and wow, is it wonderful!! It will be wonderful to be able to use a Dale’s ‘equivalent’ more often! 🙂
Please come up with a recipe for steak sauce so you don’t hurt the poor things feelings by putting ketchup on it!!! 🙂 Thanks for the marinade recipe! I love Dales and Moores and my fave is Allegro made in Paris, Tn.
I recently found out I need to watch my sodium/salt intake so I’m hoping this will be a much better alternative for me. Thank You for sharing!
“Just be glad you buy your meat in a store and don’t have to “prepare” it start to finish yourself” – LOL! Actually I do that when it comes to venison. We are into our hunting here in PA so we plant food plots for deer, watch them throughout the summer season, then come fall – look out – It’s Happy Hunting Season! And quite frankly I prefer it this way. I LOVE knowing where, when, and how my meat was prepared…. Guess that’s why I do lots of preserving of food from my garden as well.
That soy sauce will make your meat really tender. I marinate with ths soy sauce and a can of coca-cola. Sometimes I will soak a pork tenderloin in coca-cola and soy sauce and let it sit for four hours, then bake in the oven on 350 for 1 hour(according to what size the loin is), and fry some sweet potatoes and Rhodes put out some larger size yeast rolls. Let the rolls sit out from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM and they are huge. Slather on some butter and bake till brown and cook some string beans, and squash patties, this is good eating!
Kim….I am going to try the coke idea. and the rolls are making my mouth water….:)