Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Cooking with Classic Cocktails: How to Make an Alcohol Marinade for Your Meat

Pat Evans
By

alcohol marinade
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Sipping a well-craft cocktail is a beautiful experience, but there are other uses for these beverages. Booze can often find its way into the kitchen — often as a cook imbibes —but with the right techniques, a creative chef can marinate with cocktails.

There are some natural flavor match-ups for meats and cocktails, but of course experimentation is always encouraged. Be aware that alcohol has a tendency to cook the outside of meat, meaning the flavor won’t necessarily penetrate the rest of the cut. To work around this, cook the alcohol out of a cocktail by allowing it to simmer for approximately two hours, which will help solidify the flavors within the mixture. It’s generally recommended that alcohol marinades be used for less than four hours, especially with light fish and shellfish.

Recommended Videos

Now, without further ado, here are some classical cocktails that also make great marinades.

Margarita

Margarita Shrimp alcohol marinade
Image used with permission by copyright holder

A quick five to 10 minute stop in a margarita bath should be all some skewered shrimp need before heading to the grill. Tequila-lime shrimp is a menu staple at many bars, and a margarita mixture delivers a little extra sweetness and char with sugar.

You can upgrade with other fruits or spice it up with jalapeno. Here are some essential tequila cocktails you need to know, including a classic margarita recipe.

Vodka Tonic

Vodka Tonic Chicken alcohol marinade
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Vodka is already a staple in some pasta sauces, but a simple vodka tonic can be used to marinade a piece of chicken, preferably for a short duration — say 30 minutes. Lime would be the major contributing flavor factor, unless a flavored vodka is substituted in, but don’t underestimate the role of good tonic water. Gin lovers could also test the botanical spirit with a similar gin and tonic — just make sure to use the best gin.

Old Fashioned

old fashioned steak alcohol marinade
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For a cheap steak — who would marinade a nice steak? — an Old Fashioned offers a way to cut through the toughness with a variety of strong tastes. Bourbon and sugar bring vanilla and oak flavors to the meat (sounds tasty for a chili), but the fruits of an orange or cherry also accompany a steak excellently. These are our favorite whiskeys for Old Fashioneds.

Dark and Stormy

dark and stormy ribs
Image used with permission by copyright holder

This classic rum recipe is a great choice for many meats, but ribs or pork tenderloin would be an ideal choice. The marinade can also end up making a great barbecue sauce. A quality rum will make all the difference.

Pat Evans
Pat Evans
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Pat Evans is a writer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, focusing on food and beer, spirits, business, and sports. His full…
This is why you add water to whiskey (plus, our best tips)
Why adding water to whiskey works
Whiskey in a glass

We aren’t in the business of telling you how to enjoy your whiskey. Whether you like it mixed into a classic cocktail, neat, on the rocks, imbibed out of a ram’s horn, or even an old shoe you found by the railyard (although we’d probably advise against that if possible), we don’t care. That’s your prerogative. But, depending on the whiskey, there are a few ways to heighten the experience.

One of the best ways to heighten your whiskey-tasting experience is to add water. And no, we aren’t talking about a cup of water; we’re talking about a few splashes. Why should you do this? Keep reading, and you’ll never look at whiskey and water the same way again.
The whiskey-tasting experience

Read more
Don’t make this super common mistake when chilling wine in an ice bucket
Chill your wine easily without the need for any expensive equipment.
Rose wine in ice bucket

When it comes to chilling wine, there are countless ways to get the job done. The market is saturated with products made specifically for cooling wine down to the perfect drinking temperature, from luxurious wine refrigerators to elegant marble wine chillers. We can almost guarantee that the passionate wine lover in your life probably has a pantry full of these fancy contraptions, each one more exciting (and expensive) than the last. After all, wine is an art and enjoying it at the correct temperature is an absolute must. At the end of the day, though, even with all the bells and whistles, it's hard to beat a good old-fashioned ice bath - especially when trying to cool down that wine in a hurry. But, as simple as this wine-chilling technique may be, it is possible to get it wrong. That's why we've collected a few tips and tricks for getting that wine chilled exactly right every time.
Order matters when chilling wine

While the more aesthetically pleasing option may be to fill your favorite wine chilling bucket with ice and simply nestle in your favorite bottle or two, this method is actually pretty ineffective when it comes to chilling wine in a pinch. By dumping ice into a container and plopping the wine on top, only the bottom half of the bottle will actually chill. It's important to fully cover your wine (or other beverage) bottles with ice so that the entire bottle has a chance to actually get cold. Do this by putting your bottle(s) in the bucket first, and then topping with ice - not the other way around. The more the bottle is covered with ice, the better. While this might not get you the sexiest photo shoot of your wine luxuriously resting in an ice bath, it's the better way to get the contents cold.
Use water and...salt?

Read more
These are the 10 most popular cocktails in the U.S.
The ten most popular cocktails might surprise you
most popular cocktails friends toasting with

You might not realize it, but there was a time when Americans weren’t so into cocktails. You couldn’t visit seemingly any city or town and find a few cocktail bars to visit. Your best option was a swanky hotel bar or a local bartender who happened to know how to make a whiskey sour. This all changed during the cocktail renaissance of the early aughts. More bartenders and drinkers got excited about rediscovering long-forgotten drinks while breathing new life into some that they took for granted.

Fast-forward to today, when bartenders are the new celebrity chefs of the world, and cocktail bars continue to pop up everywhere from Bakersfield to Baton Rouge. Wouldn’t you like to know what cocktails drinkers enjoy more than others in this now mixed-drink-saturated country? Thanks to NielsenIQ, you can.

Read more