Simple Poultry Marinades

Are you searching for a healthy, simple, and cost effective way to feed you and your family? Poultry is a tasty and nutritious meat that can be prepared in countless ways that are irresistible to family members of all ages. Here are three delicious and hearty marinades for chicken and turkey that are sure to be favorites in your home.

Garlic & Herb Chicken Marinade
As with most marinades, you need an acid and an oil to properly penetrate your seasonings into your meat without deteriorating it's freshness or causing off flavors. To make a delicious garlic and herb marinade for chicken breasts, start off with 1/3 cup of virgin or extra virgin olive oil. Try to use real olive oil and not a substitute or flavored oil, as the nutritional content is vastly different. Mix a 1/3 cup of either sherry or red cooking wine, depending on what your tastes prefer.

You want both garlic powder and minced garlic for this recipe, adding about two teaspoons of each into the mixture, and keep mixing once you add them. Next, you want to add some herbs; fresh herbs minced and chopped once rinsed are always best, but dried herbs work just fine in this marinade. I like to make a rosemary and basil mixture, using 1 teaspoon for 1 teaspoon with each. (A teaspoon of both onion salt and black pepper taste great in this marinade as well.)The seasonings in this marinade, as every marinade, should be to taste.

Once you've mixed all of the ingredients together, coat your chicken and let marinate in the refrigerator for 3 to 8 hours. This makes enough to marinate anywhere from 6 to 14 chicken breast cutlets. It's preferred to bake the chicken when using this method, or a small tabletop grill works well too.

Lemon Peel Chicken Marinade
Lemon chicken is a favorite on many tables in an American home. There are many ways to make it, but I strongly prefer a perfectly marinated, citrusy, juicy lemon chicken breast. To make a simple lemon peel marinade, start off with ¼ cup of real virgin olive oil. Add about ¼ cup of fresh lemon juice, and 1/8 cup of water. Mix the liquids together, and gradually mix in a tablespoon of paprika, a tablespoon of parsley, black pepper to taste, and a few dashes of garlic powder, with a fork. Once you've mixed your marinade together, take a small handheld cheese or veggie grater, and grate a good sized hunk of lemon peel into tiny shreds. Keep them aside in a separate bowl.

Marinate your chicken in a ceramic or glass bowl, pouring the marinade over it, and sprinkling the lemon peel on top, keeping it covered in the fridge for 3-8 hours. The preferred method of cooking chicken with this marinade is roasting or grilling.

Sweet Onion Turkey or Chicken Marinade
This is a sweet and delicious marinade for turkey or chicken. You need a large peeled and cleaned sweet onion, half a fresh cleaned red onion, two tablespoons of white cane sugar, ½ cup of extra virgin real olive oil, and 1/8 cup sherry cooking wine, with salt and pepper to taste. Slicing your onions is easy, just cut halfway (you only need half of a red onion anyway), and slice thin using the flat surface of the onion as a base. Separate into very thin strands of onion.

Separate some of your olive oil, you'll need about less than half put in a frying pan. Heat up the onions in the pan oil until they're just about to caramelize, and then remove them from heat. Let the oil cool before adding to the rest of the marinade mixture. Marinate your turkey or chicken in the cooled down mixture for 5-8 hours, turning over every few hours to make sure it soaks in. The preferred method of cooking a chicken with this marinade is to grill it, and the best way to eat a turkey with this marinade is to roast it Thanksgiving style, even if it's cut. Enjoy!