On Sat, 3 Sep 2016 13:19:26 -0400, Dave Smith
> wrote:

>On 2016-09-03 1:10 PM, jmcquown wrote:
>> On 9/3/2016 7:23 AM, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
>>> On Friday, September 2, 2016 at 10:53:21 PM UTC-4, Bruce wrote:
>>>> In article >,
>>>> says...
>>>>>
>>>>> This is the raw flank steak. Marinated in Wishbone Italian salad
>>>>> dressing. No soy sauce and gee, it's not pork anything.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://s12.postimg.org/egj7jh571/flank.jpg
>>>>
>>>> Wishbone Italian salad dressing, nice. I should marinate something in
>>>> water, soybean oil, distilled vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic, onion, red
>>>> bell peppers, xanthan gum,
>>>
>> I could have (and have many times) made my own marinade for the flank
>> steak using oil, vinegar, etc. It was just easier to dump a bottle of
>> Wishbone dressing on the steak. It tasted very good, broiled and sliced
>> thinly against the grain to just about medium rare.
>>
>> How much easier was it than slicing onion, garlic, bell peppers? Easy
>> peasy. I wanted a quick and easy marinade with no fuss. That's what I
>> got. Quite tasty, too.
>>
>
>Marinade is generally some variation of salad dressing..... oil, vinegar
>(or lemon or line juice), salt, pepper and herbs. It makes a quick and
>easy marinade. For most people, the only real benefit to making a
>marinade instead of using dressing is the cost. My wife makes an oil
>and vinegar dressing that is better than anything I have bought, and it
>is a heck of a lot cheaper than bottled dressing.

That would be subject to which dressing vs what ingredients. There
are plenty of low priced bottled dressings that are quite passible for
a marinade (the store brands are made by the national brands anyway,
and in the same run, just with different packaging). A from scratch
marinade can be quite pricey (not to mention labor intensive), which
is why I marinate in ziploc bags so as to use a small quantity of
marinade. For me the primary advantage of bottled dressing is time
and effort saved. Plus I see no advantage to mixing up from scratch
dressings in quantity as without the preservatives of bottled it tends
not to keep well... a day passes and it has the value of that half can
of beer the morning after the party. I make from scratch dressings
and marinades when I want something special that can't be store
bought... I've not seen a decent store bought oriental dressing or
marinade yet and I've tried several, all are awful... last one was a
couple months ago and I phoned Kraft Foods to bitch that their sesame
ginger recipe sucked. Even the bottled marinades at the Oriental
markets are garbage, so salty (and smell terrible) they'd ruin a piece
of meat. It's very easy to mix my own; a secret ingriedient I added
to my last sparerib marinade was marachino cherry juice, blends well
with soy sauce, hosien, garlic, sesame oil, etc. My guests thought my
ribs were wonderful but no one recognized the marachino flavor even
though I used a few of those cherries as garnish.