Other forms: marinated, marinating
To marinate is to leave meat resting in a flavoured liquid before cooking. Marinate overnight, a marinated chicken, marinate in oil and lemon.
The flavour barely penetrates more than a few millimetres however long you leave it, so the marinade is mostly about the surface. Acid firms the outside and salt actually does get in, which is why brining works where marinating does less.
1verbmarinateTo leave meat resting in a flavoured liquid before cooking.
“Marinate the chicken in yoghurt and spices overnight.”
Patternmarinate sth in + liquid · marinate for + time · marinated + noun · marinade
marinate is a preparing.
It comes from the Latin for sea water, the same as marine: meat left in salty water, like a fish still lying in the sea, before it is cooked.
hooks ontomarine
Italian marinare and French mariner come from Latin marinus, of the sea, since the first marinades were brine.
Latin
marina — brine, salt water
Italian
marinare — to pickle, marinate
French
mariner
English, today
marinate
1645; adapted from either French mariner or the earlier attested Italian marinare (“to pickle, marinate”) (see -ate and -ate), from Latin marina (“brine, salt water”), short for aqua marina (“sea water”), from Latin marinus (“marine, of the sea”), from Latin mare (“the sea”) from Proto-Indo-European móri (“the sea”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA