Vodka Marinade

Our answer

Marinating meat serves two purposes - to add flavour and to tenderize. The flavour comes from herbs and spices and the tenderizing is usually done by an acid ingredient. Nigella's Vodka Marinated Steak recipe (from Feast and on the NIgella website) has a lot of garlicky, herby flavour but as vodka is only mildly acidic it will not tenderize that much (though it does mean the meat can sit in the marinade for 2 to 3 days).

You can use the marinade for other cuts of meat but it will be better suited to some cuts than others. If you are using it for chicken then the favours will be quite strong relative to the mild chicken flavour, so you may only want to marinate chicken for a few hours. For pork a slightly tougher, more flavoursome cut such as shoulder steaks will be better marinated for a couple of days whereas fillet or loin should have a shorter marinating time. Lamb is the most similar to beef and so would take the marinade well and we would particularly suggest leg steaks for the recipe.