Last night I made some lovely chicken. However the flavour from the marinade was lacking and spotty. Some parts of the chicken (drumsticks) were quite flavourful, while in others the flavour was more in the background almost like an after thought.
Now, a quick note – I normally cook using dry rubs as opposed to marinades, but like most of my other questions I am trying to broaden my horizons and add tools to my "culinary tool kit".
Below is my procedure and then my question.
Procedure
- Rinsed chicken
- Made marinade (500ml mango juice, 6 fresno peppers with seeds, salt and pepper, 3 green onions, a dash of soy sauce)
- Placed chicken in container and poured the marinade over the chicken so that it was all submerged and shook briefly to make sure it was well mixed
- Placed in the fridge for (what was supposed to be 4 hours, but ended up being 24 — long story)
- Place on BBQ, lightly salted, and cooked at a temperature (approx. 375F – it varied occasionally to turn but was generally around 375F for 90% of the time on the grill).
Question
Despite sitting in the marinade for so long the flavour didn't "uptake" well, and did so unevenly across the meat. My questions below – I feel all have the same underlying cause.
- How can I better ensure that the flavour seeps into the meat more uniformly?
- How do I prevent "spotty" flavouring in the future?
- Would poking the chicken, just to break the skin, have helped?
Best Answer
The scientific foundation for this answer is in the fantastic post pointed out in the comments here.
Basically there are two parts to this problem, as pointed out by the other post - one part is the composition of your flavor components that you want to penetrate the meat, and as discussed at length in the original post, more lipossoluble molecules and smaller molecules penetrate the meat better; the other one is the surface area to volume ratio of your chicken, for the molecules that will have more difficulty in reaching the deep confines of the chicken, so in that case, the smaller pieces of chicken you use, the better.
This is essentially the scientific foundation for why wings and legs are more flavorful than breast, especially when it is a whole chicken.
Either change the composition of your marinade (this one is very water soluble and has a lot of big flavor molecules) or cut your chicken in smaller pieces (so the surface area to volume ratio is better).
If you want to change the composition of your marinade to include more oil-soluble substances, I advise you to use buttermilk as a liquid, since it has a larger oil-to-water ratio and it will be a better solvent for your additional spices and ingredients. For a suggestion on the ingredients, the chili family in general contains capsaicin which is liposoluble and gives the spicy kick; black pepper, anise, cloves and nutmeg all contain eugenol, which is a small molecule and also has a good solubility in fat and gives the aromatic aspect; you can also use roasted sesame oil for the smokey depth and an Asian-like feel.
If it is just breaking the skin, not really. What really helps is injecting, so you get more surface for your brine to permeate the chicken.