safety cooking question

i have a great recipe for chicken that uses a marinade of olive oil, mustard, herbs and other ingredients- the raw chicken sits in the marinade for 4 hrs and then bakes in the marinade. is it safe to then serve that marinade as a sauce? :look:

Boil the marinade for a couple minutes before pouring it over the chicken after you have cooked it.

As long as the marinade cooks with the chicken -- gets above boiling point for however long the chicken cooks (45 minutes at least, right?), no problem. No need to boil it. The baking takes care of it.

I'm not sure it would get hot enough, if you are only cooking the chicken to 155-160, the marinade might not reach 212.

Ditto what Abe said - must boil the marinade to be sure its safe
(remove chicken first!!! :) )

If the chicken itself is safe at 160 why not the stuff it's marinated in? In any case the liquid marinade will get hotter than the more dense meat in the same oven for the same length of time.

Jock

I don't know the facts and figures on the reasons for boiling the marinade - perhaps one of our scientifically minded people can pick up on this - but its very common practice, and the recipes all say to do it. Even for many bbq marinades - you can use them, but have to boil them beforehand. Helps thicken and concentrate the flavours too, so that can only be a bonus :)

So - there must be a good reason. Have fun with it - I love marinading chicken, have tried all sorts of combinations, its great fun to experiment with it.

If you must use it, boil it. The raw chicken sits in the marinade and contaminates it.

IMO though marinade which can be used as a sauce should be a sauce instead of a marinade.

Kuan, doesn't that beg Jock's question?

If the chicken---a presumed contaminent---is made safe at 160F, then why does the marinade have to be heated higher than that? And what about the marinade that's been absorbed by the chicken? And the amounts sitting on the skin?

For me it's academic, though. Cuz I agree with you. A sauce should be made to be a sauce.

Take the temperature. Use the same temperature guidelines for your marinade as you would for your chicken since we're talking about the same contaminants. If in doubt, boil.

There are other reasons to to give a meat marinade a thorough boil. As the marinade seeps into the chicken (in this case) the chicken blood and other juices will flow into the marinade. When it heats you will get a "scum", just as you do when making a stock. Boiling the marinade (and I don't mean a violent, rolling boil--just enough to agitate the surface a little) will bring that scum to the surface and allow you to remove it. Better to do that at the front end than have that "albumany" stuff floating around in your gravy boat. This process will also act as a "mini-clarification" and help clean your sauce as well.

All of that said I question why you would want to turn the marinade (as you describe it, it is also a cooking liquid) into a sauce. Obviously there is the idea flavour building, that the liquid should have a alot of flavour. My worry is that it might taste on the burnt side. Also, you didn't give the proportions of the ingredients. You might very well have nothing but an oilly mess that wouldn't make for a nice sauce at all.

If you want to make a tastey sauce based on this method I would try removing the chicken from the pan, setting the pan on a moderately hot element long enough or the solids to cook onto the bottom of the pan. The fat will (should) separate. Pour the fat out of the pan and then deglaze the pan with wine, stock or a combination there off. Scrape those tastey, brown bits off the bottom and let them dissolve into the liquid and cook it down a little. You get bonus points for straining this liquid off before serving by the way. If you like, finish your sauce with some of the same mustard and herbs that went in the marinade.

--Al

Like Allan said Why not just make a sauce with the same ingredients in it as the marinade minus all the oil. Maybe substitute stock or cream and utilize the some of the drippings (again minus the oil/fat)? There are exceptions to this but marinated meats typically shouldn't require a sauce. Then again that's up to one's own taste. ;):D