Clearing out the marinades and sauces

Do you find your cupboards and fridge get cluttered up with part-used bottles of marinades and sauces? I do - there are often bottles in gift packs and goody bags, and everything else gets used but the marinades and endless barbecue sauces linger on. To be honest, I prefer to make my own marinades, not only do I know exactly what's gone into them, they also tend to have more flavour, and I can ring the changes each time I make them. And when it comes to sauces, tomato ketchup, classic brown sauce and sweet chilli can't be beaten!

However I had half-jars of two marinades in the fridge. They were actually ones I'd been sent to review, but I was so unimpressed with them that I agreed with the PR that it was better not to post my review. However as I hate waste, I wanted to find ways to use up the remains of the jars, so here are two meals I produced using them - you could use any kind of spicy barbecues sauce or marinade for either of the meals.

For the first dish, I used an Asian style barbecue sauce. I marinated some thinly sliced frying steak in a few spoonfuls of the sauce for a couple of hours, and then stir fried it with some spring onions, adding a tin of mixed bamboo shoots and water chestnuts and a generous splash of soy sauce.

I served this with rice and the Asian style semi pickled salad which I blogged about the other day.

The second marinade was a Jerk seasoning. I marinated two on-the-bone chicken breasts overnight in it.  I took two sweet potatoes and cut them into wedges, then tossed them with 1tbs sunflower oil and 2 tsp Cajun seasoning (also left over from a gift box!) then roasted them with the chicken in a hot oven for 40 minutes.

I served these with corn on the cob with chilli-lime butter (soften a knob of butter and beat in chilli flakes, grated lime zest and a little lime juice) and a salad of red onion, red chicory, little gem lettuce and mustard and cress.

I'm sharing this with Kitchen Clearout at Madhouse Family Reviews.