This easy bbq marinade is incredibly simple, requiring just 2 minutes to prepare with only 3 ingredients. It’s versatile, pairing well with chicken, pork, or prawns, and works whether you’re grilling or baking. Plus, you can use either store-bought or homemade bbq sauce to whip up this marinade in no time. With its ease of preparation and delicious flavor, it’s sure to become a go-to for your favorite grilled or baked dishes.
Take your bbq sauce and turn it into a marinade with this super easy bbq marinade recipe.
My family is huge on marinades – and I’ve develop a ton of grilling marinades over many months. But I wanted to develop a bbq marinade that was quick and easy, which tends to be what most people want for a weeknight dinner.
BBQ sauce by itself is typically hard to use as a marinade due to its higher sugar content – your protein is likely to just stick to the grill or become charred.
Adding in the oil and little bit of kosher salt helps grease the wheels (or in this case, the grill grates) and packs in just a bit of extra flavor that’s best when using a marinade.
If you want details about how this recipe was tested you can read below, but if you need a TLDR – I tested it with many different sauces and it worked for them all. So if you’ve got a sauce you love chances are it will work as a marinade with this recipe.
Read on to see simple it is, as well as to get tips and good-to-know info when making this barbecue marinade.
Grab these 3 ingredients
(Note: the full ingredients list, including measurements, is provided in the recipe card at the bottom of this post.)
- BBQ sauce: you can either make this yourself or buy one at the store. I’ve tested this recipe with several different marinades, both store-bought and homemade, and it’s tasted good with all of them. My favorite might be might be my maple bbq sauce though.
- Oil: any mild, higher-heat oil will do. I like to use avocado oil.
- Kosher salt: this recipe calls for Diamond Crystal kosher salt, which is my preferred salt. It is less salty by volume than other salts which means it leaves a little more room for error when salting your food. If you are using a different type of salt (kosher or otherwise), you’ll want to use this salt conversion chart from Epicurious to determine how much salt to use.
Keys to a great marinade
All marinades should have the following 4 elements:
- salt to season the meat,
- fat to coat the meat,
- acid to help break down the protein fibers, and
- spices, herbs, or other flavors.
In this marinade, the oil is the fat, there’s kosher salt, and the bbq sauce has both some acid (from tomatoes) as well as other spices and flavors.
Using store-bought vs homemade bbq sauce
This recipe was tested with several types of bbq sauces, both store-bought and homemade. It works with all of the kinds I tested, and I would venture to say many others.
Despite the ease of using a pre-made bottle of bbq sauce, my preference is to use homemade BBQ sauce. I’m listing out the ones I liked the best below, but really any of the ones on my site would work and still taste good.
How to make a basic bbq marinade
(Note: please see the recipe card at the end of this post for the complete written instructions.)
This marinade is so easy – you’re basically just combining everything in one cup. The photos show things measuring out in a bowl, but you can use a liquid measuring cup to make clean up even easier.
Recommended marinating times
You’ll want a different marinating time for different types of proteins. Here are my recommendations.
- For chicken: 1 to 2 hours for boneless or bone-in cuts.
- For pork: 1 hour for thinner or smaller cuts of pork (like thin-cut chops or tenderloin), and 2 hours for thicker cuts (like boneless pork chops).
- For prawns or shrimp: 1 hour (shells removed).
Cooking with bbq marinade
You can either bake or grill proteins with this marinade. The cooking time and temperature is going to depend on the cut of meat you’re cooking.
In all cases, you want to cook the meat until it reaches the right internal temperature. I’ve listed them out below, but be sure and check out this guide on internal temperatures for meat – it’s written for grilling but is applicable for all cooking methods.
- Chicken: cook to 165 degrees F
- Pork: cook to 165 degrees F
- Prawns & Shrimp: cook to 145 degrees F (or until opaque all the way through)
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3-Ingredient BBQ Marinade for Chicken, Pork, & Prawns
Ingredients
- ½ cup bbq sauce homemade or store-bought
- ¼ cup mild oil like avocado oil
- 1 tsp kosher salt Diamond Crystal
Instructions
- Pour ½ cup of bbq sauce into a liquid measuring cup, then pour the oil on top (can also pour both into a larger bowl). Measure out the kosher salt with a measuring spoon and add it in with the sauce and oil.
- Use a whisk to briskly stir everything together until the oil, salt, and sauce combine. Use right away with your choice of protein.
Notes
- Makes enough marinade for 1 lb of protein.
- Keep an additional ⅔ to ¾ cup of bbq sauce separate for adding onto the protein either during or after it cooks for additional flavor.
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