Mix Up Your Marinade With Grilled Lemongrass Beef

With grilling season wearing on, you may be getting a little bored with Japanese and Mexican glazes and marinades. Here's an easy marinade that will infuse your meat with a fresh herbal flavor and loads of umami. With plenty of garlic, ginger and lemongrass to offset any fishiness coming from the fish sauce, and a natural meat tenderizer, you get tender juicy skewers infused with the flavors of Southeast Asia.

I've covered all the different ways to tenderize meat in the past, but of all the enzymatic tenderizers, I like using kiwi fruit the best. That's because the active enzyme in kiwifruit (actinidain), is effective at tenderizing connective tissue without being so aggressive that the meat turns to mush. It also has a relatively neutral flavor and a nice sweetness that works well in marinades.

While they may look pretty, skewering vegetables together with meat results in over cooked meat or undercooked vegetables as they take different amounts of time to cook. One solution is to skewer them separately, but I prefer to just sauté the vegetables in a pan along with some salt and pepper and then stick the skewers on top of the vegetables. That way you end up with meat cooked just the way you like it, on a colorful bed of veggies that are cooked to perfection.