Who’s Ollie?
I haven’t a clue, but I came across this interesting vintage marinade after researching a restaurant mentioned in a novel. The restaurant is long gone in real life, but Ollie’s kinda surprisingly zippy marinade lives on across the interwebs!
Note: I have changed a few things from the original to suit our personal tastes. For example, I am not a huge fan of cumin, so swapped out my fave curry powder.
But see, that’s the cool thing about making your own stuff – you don’t have to settle!
There’s also kindofa lot of ingredients to this recipe, but the final flavor is more than worth the minimal mixing effort.
INGREDIENTS
Dry:
•1/4 cup sugar
•2 tbsp paprika
•1 tbsp garlic powder
•1 tbsp crushed red pepper (really)
•1 tsp curry powder
•1 tsp ground black pepper
•1 tsp ground coriander
•1 tsp fennel seed
•1/2 tsp onion powder
•1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper
•1/2 tsp Aleppo pepper
•1/2 tsp cornstarch
•1/2 tsp turmeric
Wet:
•3/8 cup lemon juice
•2 tbsp lower sodium Tamari
•2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
•2 tbsp A-1 steak sauce
•1 tbsp Sherry Peppers Sauce*
•1 tbsp Heinz 57 sauce
•2 tsp cider vinegar
•2 tsp canola oil
*No Sherry Peppers Sauce? No Problem! Simply add a bit of decent sherry (none of that “cooking” stuff) and a dash or three of your fave hot sauce, to taste.
Whisk the wet ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
Stir the dry ingredients together in another bowl until well mixed, then stir into the wet ingredients.
Note: the marinade will be quite thick.
Take out two tablespoons of the marinade (I will explain what we’re doing with that tomorrow), then pour the balance of the marinade over your meat of choice in a gallon sized zipper bag. Close the bag, toss a bit to make sure all of the meat is nicely coated, then arrange on a rimmed platter (for to catch any drippage), and toss in the fridge.
The original Ollie recipe was meant to go over burgers, and it was quite good. If you go that route, they only need to marinate for 30 minutes or so before grilling.
Our burgers turned out really well, and very tasty, but, I thought that Ollie could very well be used for other stuff, too.
Like, boneless pork loin ends that one of our local markets stocks at a very decent price.
If you go that route, or choose to use this on steak or chops or chicken or whatever, I would say to marinate in the fridge for at least a couple of hours or, always more better, overnight; flipping the bag over whenever you think to.
When ready to grill, remove the meat from the marinade, shaking off and excess, then grill as you like.
We liked this very much!