Baste And Taste.

Doing Marinade Mambo

Chicken, fish, chicken, chicken, fish, chicken, chicken. If that's a snapshot of a week's worth of dinners around your house, we've got two words for you: bottled marinades. We're not talking about the traditional barbecue, steak, stir-fry, or other grilling and cooking sauces that people often use as marinades.

Most supermarkets and health food stores carry a dazzling array of new herbed, curried, fruited, and spiced marinades that can put some snap in your salmon and a charge in your chicken.

No Need to Marinate 

Bottled marinades have a lot in common with bottled salad dressings. (In fact, the main difference between some companies' marinades and salad dressings may be their names.)

Like dressings, marinades can go from fat-free to fatty. And that fat, like the fat in dressings, is largely unsaturated, which means that it won't threaten your heart. But if you're too heavy with the spoon, any fat can damage your waistline. Two tablespoons of St. Dalfour Rhapsodie Aux Herbes de Provence, for example, hit 240 calories. And even a marinade like McCormick Golden Dipt Garlic Herb, at 120 calories, can da some mischief if you pour it on too liberally.

Even so, it's not calories that are waiting to ambush you in the marinade aisle. It's sodium. Too much salt knocked some entire brands--especially big-name companies like Lawry's, Allegro, and KC Masterpiece--out of the running before we began.

Not to worry. Our Best Bite criterion--no more than 300 mg of sodium in two tablespoons--left more than enough marinades to choose from. (It even left a great-tasting teriyaki, Perks Peri-Peri Sweet Pineapple, which pulls off its bit of magic by substituting sweet for salty.) Almost all of our Best Bites are smaller, sometimes-hard-to-find health-food-store or gourmet-aisle brands.

To separate the yummers from the bummers, we tasted dozens (and dozens) of pieces of marinated broiled chicken breast. We used two tablespoons of marinade for each four ounces of (raw) chicken. That's twice as much as most bottles list as a single serving, but it was barely enough to coat the chicken. (We're assuming that some still gets left on the plate, but there's no way to tell how much.)

Tip for the time-challenged: We marinated for an hour. We marinated for six hours. We marinated overnight. Amazingly, the marinades delivered just as much flavor when we smeared them on the chicken just before popping it under the broiler. (Using just a smear before broiling is also a tip for the folks who might get sticker shock when they see the $5 or $6 price tags on some of these often-small bottles.)

Wild Thymes at Marinade High

Many of our Best Bites sounded exciting; who could resist Kalamata Olive & Caper or Key Lime Ginger? With exotic ingredients and labels depicting swaying palms and saucy sombreras, we expected a honeymoon in a bottle. And while some didn't live up to their promise, many are worth a shake.

Among the standouts: Wild Thymes Tropical Mango Lime actually contained pieces of fresh minced mango. In fact, the whole Wild Thymes array was delicious. Nothing blunted the peppery kick of Miko Wasabi Ginger or Wild Thymes Sweet Orange Hot Chili. And any fish would make a splash under a little Cardini's Lime Dill or Consorzio Tropical Grill. Drew's Rosemary Balsamic and The Ginger People Ginger Sesame bath had a delightfully gentle bite.

There were some duds, of course. Marinade Bay Rosemary Mint tasted distressingly like Doublemint chewing gum, and Consorzio Baja Lime could just as easily have been called Consorzio Household Cleaner. Some entire lines fell short. St. Dalfour's marinades, for example, were all pretty pallid. Luckily, though, there were far more flips than flops.

Beyond Chicken

The fresh and frisky flavors of our Best Bites would perk up more than just chicken. Cardini's Pesto Pasta or Italian would taste right at home on a pasta salad. Drew's Smoked Tomato would make an unusual dip for shrimp. Miko Toasted Sesame Seed, Miko Ginger, or Drew's Sesame Orange could wake up any stir-fry. Soy Vay Cha-Cha Chinese Chicken Salad Dressing & Marinade made us yearn for a bowl of greens. World Harbors Bombay Mango would make a spectacular curried simmer sauce for cauliflower, eggplant, or other vegetables. And a tablespoon of Wild Thymes Tropical Mango Lime would da your baked sweet potato proud.

The bottom line: the new bottled marinades make it fast and easy to rise to the challenge of chicken or fish ... again ... and again. The information for this article was compiled by Beth Sumrell.