Mesquite Chicken Marinade

This mesquite chicken marinade is freezer friendly and packs a smokey punch that will brighten up any chicken meal! This marinade is perfect for grilling, baking, or sauteeing your chicken!

You guys, this might be my new go-to chicken marinade recipe.  It’s so smokey, sweet, and delicious I can’t stand it!  Good thing too, because, sometimes I go on spice benders at Costco.  I buy all the spices that look good. 

And then I end up with Costco amounts of spice mixes, which take six years to go through.  Don’t get me wrong. I love the mesquite seasoning from Costco.  (My Costco Healthy Eating Favorites List) It adds a ton of delicious smokey flavor to any chicken, pork, or fish meal, but it’s hard to use up the whole bottle when you are using just sprinkles at a time, like in my mesquite baked chicken recipe.  

I decided to try using the mesquite seasoning as a base for a chicken marinade, that way I could use a ton of the seasoning to impart more flavor into the chicken (and use up the bottle.) Plus, whenever possible, I try to use a marinade anyway. Marinating meat not only reduces the formation of carcinogens when cooking, but it also tenderizes it and imparts more flavor.  

What is Mesquite Seasoning?

Mesquite seasoning is usually a blend of natural mesquite smoke as well as sweet and savory flavors.  You can get the mesquite flavor by grilling your meat on mesquite planks (similar to the process you use for cedar planks.) 

However, you may not have access to or want to hassle with the planks.  That’s where the mesquite seasoning comes in. The natural smoke flavor mimics the smokey taste mesquite would impart on your food.  

You can marinate your meat in as little as 30 minutes, but longer is better.  Up to 24-48 hours in the marinade is ideal. 

Like my other chicken marinade recipes, you can freeze all the ingredients together for up to 3 months.  Then, all you have to do is pull the chicken out of the freezer and defrost before cooking it!

We chose to use the grill for cooking up our meat, but this marinade works deliciously for baking, grilling, or pan-frying meat.  It’s very versatile!  Let me know if you try it!