"Kent" > wrote:
> There's very little in a marinade or brine to add to a sauce.
> Marinades don't pick up any bird flavor. Boiling the marinade doesn't do
> anything except increase the salt, the sugar, and what you have put in it.
> My marinades always have a bit of oil and vinegar, which you can't do much
> of anything with. Brines have nothing in them other than salt and sugar
> and a few obscure seasonings..

If you put almost nothing into the marinade, then yes, it will have nothing
useful in it to add to a sauce. I certainly put more in it than oil, vinegar
and salt (if I put any of those in to begin with). The seasonings I put in
the marinade are important, and they carry through into the sauce. Since the
marinade is rather concentrated, I usually add an even larger amount of
chicken stock or some other liquid to the sauce. Generally what I am talking
about here is poultry that gets sauted, and the sauce is a pan sauce from
deglazing.

I only use bottled marinade occassionally; most I make myself for the dish
at hand. Those times when I'm using the bottled stuff, the cooking method
doesn't lend it self to making a pan sauce... on the charcoal grill or in my
stovetop smoker. I do take the drippings from the smoker pan and make a
sauce out of those, as it has a high concentration of the marinade I used.

Marinade doesn't suddenly become a bacterial nightmare if the process was
refrigerated. It is no more and no less "contaminated" than the outside of
the poultry that was sitting in it. Proper heating will take care of any
bacterial issues in the marinade just as it does on the poultry itself.

Using a marinade to make the sauce is an integral part of some dishes, such
as sauerbraten. In the case of sauerbraten, the meat has been sitting in it
for as much as five days, if not more.

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