# Freezing meat with marinade



## backyardsmokin (Aug 9, 2011)

Hello all,

I had someone tell me this past weekend that I am using marinades wrong and would everybody's thoughts on it. 

What I like to do is use a marinate that is not too acidic so that the flavor is not over powering on a long marinade.  But then I add the marinate to the meat in a bag, vacuum seal it (which is usually me using a straw to suck the air out of a ziploc bag), then throw it in the freezer.  Once it is hard as a rock, I pull it and have it slow defrost in the fridge.  In the past this has led to some meats where the marinade is sucked down to to the center of the cut. 

The person told me that I was only supposed to use the marinade for no more than 24 hours if chilled and 1 hour if un-chilled.

Thoughts?


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## SmokinAl (Aug 9, 2011)

If your marinade has a lot of salt in it, it will get very salty if you leave it in for a long period of time. You may have to rinse or soak it in plain water for a couple of hours to get the salt content down. If there is no salt in your marinade you can leave it in for days without soaking. I have never heard of freezing the meat in marinade. It would seem to me that it would stop the marinating process once it's frozen, but I'm no expert so hopefully someone with more knowledge will be along soon to give you better answers.


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## meateater (Aug 9, 2011)

I do it quite often when I gets deals on marked down family packs. What I do is put it in a freezer ziplock with the marinade and leave overnight in the fridge then into the freezer. It will last a long time like this as it wont freezer burn if you have enough marinade around it.


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## venture (Aug 9, 2011)

I have never frozen meat in a marinade.

I can say that if your marinade is heavy in salt, as in soy sauce, extended marinades will begin to break down the proteins on the outside of the meat and give a texture you might not like.  High acid marinades will do this as well.  How this would work in a frozen environment, I do not know.  I am not sure I want to know or risk a piece of meat to find out?  With a simple rub without large amounts of salt, I can't help but wonder if that would work better?  Obviously, I stick to more traditional measures and they work for me.  If other things work for you, that is great.  Let us know!

Good luck and good smoking.


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## jirodriguez (Aug 9, 2011)

I have done that for years. I usually do what Meateater does, freezer ziploc bags. If your marinade is fairly melow then don't worry about how long the meat sits in it, but if it is salty or super acidic then you may want to marinade overnight in the fridge, then dump out the marinade and just freeze the meat.


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