I thought I would write up this article to help all of our guests and visitors who would like to enjoy using their steak marinades as a basting sauce, in addition to the marinades primary purpose. As some of you are already aware, basting steak or any meat with marinade that has been in contact with raw meat, can be both unhealthy and unsafe. The whole idea behind cooking meat, is to raise the meat's temperature to a point where most or all bacteria is killed off. If your meat has been sitting in a marinade for twelve hours, it can obviously accumulate some amount of bacteria, or the meat itself might even contain unhealthy bacteria right from the get go. This is a totally normal occurrence, and so long as you properly grill or cook your steak you have nothing to worry about, as anything harmful or unhealthy will not survive at such hot cooking temperatures.
The most traditional method of using marinade as a basting sauce, is to simply set a portion of the marinade aside before it comes into contact with any raw meat. This will guarantee your basting sauce is bacteria free, and will allow you to even use the marinade as a dipping sauce should you wish. I will generally set aside anywhere from an eight to a third of my marinade batch for grill basting. Always remember that a lot of your marinade will burn off, so if you want a good deal of flavor generated from basting, then you should make sure you have an adequate portion of it to achieve that. Obviously marinades containing dairy products or any other easily perishable ingredients, should generally not be used as a basting sauce unless they were freshly made right before cooking, and are guaranteed to be fresh and healthy for consumption.
Another way of using your marinade for grill basting, is to use the same marinade that your raw meat was in, however to only baste right when you start grilling. For example you will pull your steaks out the freezer bag, toss them on the grill, then right away you will smother them with as much marinade as possible. Once your meat starts cooking however, you do not want to baste it any further with the marinade, as there is a chance you could contaminate your meat with bacteria. Generally speaking, 165 degrees Fahrenheit or 75 degree Celsius will kill almost all bacteria in any meat. So if your grill temperature is at or exceeds that point, then you know you're safe to reuse your marinade for basting. It's always convenient to have a grill thermometer set inside your barbecue, it will prevent you from burning or drying out your meat, in addition to knowing at what point your meat will be bacteria free.
I know this issue has been mentioned at various points already throughout our website, and we don't mean to be redundant, we just want to take every precaution necessary so that our web guests and visitors can enjoy all of our marinade recipes without any chance of contaminating their food. If you have any questions about this subject, or would like further information regarding safe and unsafe grill temperatures, then please feel free to contact us. We do plan to build a web section in the future that will be solely about safe cooking, and will contain all the essential need to know informational facts regarding meat temperatures, bacteria types, and much more. Although some of this information isn't the most ideal to have around recipes, with that in mind we will write it up so that it does not cause anyone to lose their appetite.
