Marinades & Freezing

[Jessi]

So a handy tip I was taught a few years back when I was doing a lot of bulk cooking was to prepare several marinades at once, prep all the meat, split portions into ziplock bags, and freeze. This has been quite handy over time. I have a question, though....

Obviously, while frozen, the meat isn't going to be absorbing any flavors from the marinade. To actually benefit from the marinade itself, which would produce better results:

• Let the meat sit in the marinade for a few hours and THEN freeze it.
  OR
  
• Freeze it immediately, but then let the meat naturally thaw in the freezer for several hours (or overnight) and potentially benefit from the marinade during that time instead.

Ideas?

 

[OhioTom76]

I would thaw the meat entirely first before marinating it. I know it takes longer, but the frozen meat is going to have a lot of excess moisture that you should drain off before adding the marinade, otherwise you would be diluting it. If you marinate the meat before freezing it, you're more limited with what you can do with the steak once you thaw it out - suppose you wanted to try a different marinade or treatment, for example.

 

[Lostvalleyguy]

I make up batches of marinated meat skewers. I usually start with fresh meat and marinate it. The skewers I am not using immediately get frozen after they have marinaded for enough time. I agree that it limits what I can do with the meat afterwards, but the advantage for me is that the skewers can thaw quickly and be cooked with little additional prep needed.
To mix it up, I like to have a few types of meat/marinade combinations in my freezer. They cook up well on a contact grill (George Foreman style) for those who don't have a barbeque.