A Quick and Simple Spicy Barbeque Marinade

Even though there's a deluge falling outside as I write, it's fair enough to say that the weather hasn't been too bad so far this summer. Well, comparitively I mean. Normally, May tends to be a bit of an annual wahsout in Ireland; this time around we actually managed a week or two of sustained sunny weather! The measure of which in this country is - typically - the number of barbeques you can smell at any given moment, for where there is smoke, there is sunshine.

In contributing to all of this, we've already fired up a good five or six! Mostly it's been for the sake of a proper, chargrilled burger but there's always room for a marinated barbeque chicken fillet. The problem was that when I went to actually make some a couple of weeks back, I quickly discovered that the barbeque marinade I though I had stored away wasn't actually there anymore. Disaster!

For whatever reason (panic induced meat craving?), I immediately decided in looking at the fridge that mixing ketchup with one or two other ingredients would probably produce something similar. Enter my two good friends, dark soy sauce and smoked paprika! A quick stir later and surprisingly, I had ended up with a substitute that was close enough to your average bottled barbeque marinade.

Yes, the end result is a little spicier than you'd expect, but given the recent rise in popularity of bottled Jamaican jerk chicken marinades, it isn't anything too offensive. It looks even better than the real thing with a fantastic rich darkness about it, and tastes about as close as you can get to that barbeque marinade flavour without investing more time or resorting to more elusive ingredients like liquid smoke. It'll never replace the real thing for most people, but it certainly provides a remarkably quick alternative if you have the ingredients on hand.

Serves 2 (or, enough marinate for 2 large chicken fillets)

4 tbs tomato ketchup

2 tsp dark soy sauce

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Simply add all of the ingredients into a medium sized bowl and stir until properly mixed. You can add the meat you intend to marinate immediately, or store the sauce in a sealed container until you intend to use it.