Infusing Your Meal!

 

What is for dinner tonight?  Good question!  I feel like some days I spend a good chunk of time just wondering what is for dinner and I am the one cooking it!  It can be hard to come up with new recipes, ways to get the kids to eat something healthy, how to not dry out oven-baked chicken, and all the other barriers to the answer to that question!

 So, my most recent go-to answer to this question is either steak or chicken.  The easiest way to make these things different is to use sauce.  The problem I run into with sauce is that when baked it can sometimes dry out as much of the meat and the kids are going to ask if I tried to make jerky.  So to keep it interesting I have started injecting my meat.  That's right, I stick a big old needle in and push in the juice!
I started with an easy one that everyone likes, teriyaki!  A little rice, steamed veggies, and some juiced up chicken baking and you have something with a shot of being eaten when you set it in front of a bunch of kids.  I found that you don't even need to cover the outside of the meat.  Just really pump the flavor in the chicken or steak itself.  I was oddly mystified that the meat seemed to swell slightly despite full knowledge that I was, in fact, increasing its internal mass.  While cooking the juices not only heat up and boil into the meat cooking the inside with their own boiling heat, but they work their way up and outside the meat as well!

Full disclosure, I didn't realize this would happen as much as it did, but the result was great!  The meat ended up perfectly glazed with the sauce, and the meat was cooked quicker, probably due to the sauce heating the inside of the meat as well, plus the meat tasted like I had marinated it for a few hours.  That makes this a mom-win!  You can add and experiment with anything: A1, Marinara, Kung Poa, really get creative and have a what sauce did I use tonight game at dinner!  I really love it when a meal comes together with a little mom's fun!  I am always looking for ideas to put in my meat!  What are yours?
In case your wondering, I used the Marinade Meat Injector from Cave Tools.  I like this one because it came with three different types of injectors which is handy for the different types of meats you could be cooking.