3-Ingredient Steak Marinade

This easy 3-Ingredient Steak Marinade recipe enhances the flavors of your cut and makes the perfect steak every time. It’s the solution if you’re looking for a simple, low-cark, keto-friendly recipe. It’s full of flavors, brings a terrific taste to your steak and it’s ridiculously simple to make. I can guarantee that this easy steak marinade recipe is the last one you’ll need.

This marinade is a sauce made of three components that is used to slowly flavor meat or large pieces of fibrous vegetables. I’ve been making it for many, many years. In fact, it’s a recipe I got from my mum who inherited it from my grandmother. I like to believe it’s a recipe we have been transmitting from generation to generation for ever.

I absolutely love marinating meat, this is why I have made so many marinade recipes, like my Pork Chop Marinade, Greek Chicken Marinade, and Lemon Pepper Chicken Marinade. While meat all by itself is tasty, there’s nothing better than marinating it in a sauce full of flavors. It brings out the best in your steak. From dry rubs to marinades, I absolute am a true fan of turning a piece of meat into a restaurant-quality meal.

While the whole recipe is just below, don’t miss all my tips further down, including process shots, ingredient swaps, tips, and more!

The three necessary parts of a marinade are an acid, an oil, and flavorings. You can’t call “marinade” a recipe which misses any of these. As a result, you can’t make a marinade with less than 3 ingredients. This 3-ingredient marinade, however, packs a lot of taste in a simple and easy recipe. I wanted to create a 3-ingredient marinade to create this cooking standard. The basic of the basics. The alpha of meat flavoring.

Ingredients and Substitutions

All you need to make this easy steak marinade are simple, healthy ingredients.

• Olive Oil – Prefer extra-virgin olive oil. You can use flavored olive oil for a little twist, like truffle olive oil. It makes it super-fancy!
• Vinegar – You can choose from many options depending on the flavor you are after. Balsamic vinegar adds a light sweet flavor to the meat, while red wine vinegar has a tangier flavor without.
• Soy Sauce or Worcestershire sauce – both have a strong Unami flavor that marries very well with beef.

A beef marinade shouldn’t be limited to 3 ingredients, and there are some delicious additions you can make to this recipe to further enhance its taste like:

• Minced garlic or garlic powder
• Pepper – black pepper or white pepper.
• Italian herbs
• Paprika – or other similar spices
• Onion powder
• A touch of lemon juice

How To Make 3-Ingredient Steak Marinade

1. To make your steak marinade, simply combine all ingredients in a small jar.
2. Then, shake the jar vigorously to emulsion the oil.
3. You can place the steaks in a zip-lock bag with the marinade, close the bag and let them marinate in the fridge for a few hours. Another option is to use a shallow bowl, place the steak in the bowl, pour the marinade over, and film the bowl with plastic wrap.
4. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to overnight, but no more than 24 hours as an absolute maximum. I’ve found the sweet spot to be about 4 hours for classic pieces of meat, 8 hours for really thick ones. The longer you marinate the meat, the more flavor it will have. For food safety, always marinate meat in the fridge. Don’t marinate meat at room temperature to avoid bacteria proliferation.

Cooking The Meat

Once the meat has been marinated, you can cook it to the steak cooking level you prefer. It’s a marinade that brings most of its flavors with a medium-rare or medium steak because that’s when the meat juice will blend with the sauce and the muscle fibers are still intact for a better taste.

The longer you cook the meat, the more the fat particles in the marinade will degrade and lose their flavor. The cooking time of your steak will depend on the level you desire (from rare to well-done) but also on the thickness of your cut.

My cooking guide has a detailed table of cooking times per thickness, as well as the precise temperature you need inside the steak if you use a meat thermometer.

Best Side Dishes with Marinated Steak

While a steak cooked with this 3-ingredient steak marinade will be the piece de resistance, it is best served with a side dish that will balance and complement it. I recommend a salad or a roasted dish like any of the following side dishes:

Why Should You Marinate Meat

Marinating meat is absolutely a question of preference. Some people prefer the raw taste of cooked (who said burnt?) meat, while others love the flavors of herbs, spices, and oil impregnating the fibers of your piece of meat.

There are many reasons why marinating is a fantastic solution:

• For Flavors – Unflavored meat tastes, well, like meat. So depending on the piece you are working with, it can be more or less strong, but it will always taste like meat. With a marinade, you can bring a different flavor, turn you steak Mediterranean with oregano, Mexican with spices, Asian with some herbs, etc.
• For Texture – The acidic ingredient in a marinade (here the vinegar) completely transform the texture of the meat, similar to what you can get by using a tenderizer. When the meat is left to marinate for enough time, it penetrates the meat, making it super tender and juicy.
• Protecting against Overcooking – the layer of oil and the tenderizing of the meat helps protect it from overcooking and burning.
• Crusting – Some marinades allow the surface of the meat to form a thin caramelized crust that brings out the flavors.

Now marinating is not always the best option, first and foremost because you need to give it time. So you always have to plan ahead. There’s no such thing as a last-minute marinade. This marinating process can also turn into a double-edged sword (kitchen knife?) as the meat can start “cooking” with the acidic ingredient, in particular is there’s too much of it. That’s why it’s important to not leave it for more than 24 hours in the marinade.

Storage Instructions

This 3-ingredient marinade is made with very simple, plant-based ingredients. As a result, it has the same shelf life as the earliest of its ingredients. Typically, you should be able to keep it in the fridge for several weeks in an airtight container.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Marinade Recipes

If you like simple, healthy dinner recipes like this easy steak marinade recipe, you’ll love these: