Ottolenghi Smokey Honey Marinade on the Christmas Barbecue

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Ottolenghi Smokey Honey Marinade is a hot honey style jar built on caraway, chipotle chilli and smoked paprika. On a barbecue it wants two stages: marinate and cook over moderate heat, then brush the rest on in the last few minutes so the honey caramelises instead of burning.

What is in the jar, and why it matters over coals

Ottolenghi Smokey Honey Marinade is hot honey thickened into something you can actually marinate with. Chipotle is a smoked jalapeño, so the smoke is in the jar before the food gets near a flame, which is why this works as well on a gas barbecue as over charcoal. Caraway is the ingredient nobody can name in a blind taste: faintly aniseed, slightly bitter, and the reason the honey never tips into dessert.

The heat is warm rather than fierce. A jar is 270g and $22.95, enough for about eight chicken thighs with plenty left to glaze them. It is also one of the few jars in the Ottolenghi range that people reorder in autumn rather than only in December, which tells you what it really is: a working marinade that happens to suit Christmas.

The two-stage rule: marinate low, glaze last

Honey colours long before chicken cooks through. Put a thickly coated thigh straight onto a hot plate and you get a black crust over a raw middle in about six minutes. Almost every complaint about honey marinades comes back to that, and the fix is to split the job in two.

Stage one is the marinade. Coat the meat, refrigerate it, then lift it out and let most of the marinade drip off before it touches the grill. What clings on is plenty. Cook over moderate heat, hood down, around 180°C to 200°C, with one burner low or the coals raked to one side so you have somewhere to move things the moment they darken.

Stage two is the glaze. In the last three to five minutes, brush a fresh layer over the top and close the hood for a minute so it sets into a sticky, lacquered finish. Spoon out what you need for glazing into a separate bowl before any raw meat goes near the jar, and never brush marinade from the tray onto food you are about to serve.

What to put it on, and for how long

Marinating longer than the times below does not add flavour, it only firms the surface, because the salt and sugar in the jar start to cure whatever they sit on.

Cook the halloumi first. It is ready in three minutes and buys goodwill while everything else is still going, and our halloumi and padron pepper skewers are the version worth copying. For wings, the method in our sweet and smokey chicken wings transfers straight across, spring onions and lime included.

The Christmas plate it was built for

Plenty of Australian Christmas lunches are cooked outside, because nobody wants an oven at 200°C going in a Victorian summer. So a Christmas glaze has to survive a hooded barbecue and work on prawns and vegetables as readily as on meat.

A plate that holds up: prawns off first while people are still arriving, chicken thighs over indirect heat, halloumi in the middle of the table, pumpkin wedges finished with a last brush of glaze. One jar covers all of it, which is the real argument for it. For the cold end of the table we reach for the yuzu, ginger and miso marinade instead, since it sits on salmon without fighting it.

The question we field most in December is whether the jar will glaze a ham. It will: score the fat into diamonds, brush on a thin layer, then add two more through the last 20 to 30 minutes of a moderate oven, thinned with a splash of orange juice if it drags on the brush. We do not sell ham, so buy yours from a butcher you trust and let this be the glaze. Our guide to Christmas ham glaze covers the timing and the resting properly.

What else to open alongside it

• Ottolenghi Sweet and Smokey blend, 50g, $12.95. The dry version of the same idea, without the honey. A steak rub, a toss through vegetables before they roast, or a finishing salt over anything that came off the barbecue looking pale.
• Sweet and Smokey Marcona Almonds, 110g, $17.95. Marcona almonds are the short, round, softer Spanish ones. For the bowl on the table while the barbecue does its work.
• Ottolenghi Yuzu, Ginger and Miso Marinade, 270g, $22.95. Same jar size, same price, pointed at fish. Two lids cover a whole Christmas table.
• Barbecue and grilling sets. Tongs, boards and rubs boxed together, the easier answer when the person you are buying for already owns the barbecue.

Shopping for someone else rather than for your own Christmas Day, our Christmas hampers cover the same table from the other direction, hand packed with crackers, relishes and shortbread instead of a single jar.

Questions we get asked

What is in Ottolenghi Smokey Honey marinade?

Honey with caraway, chipotle chilli and smoked paprika, blended into a thick pourable marinade. The chipotle carries the smoke and a low, steady warmth; the caraway adds a faint aniseed edge that keeps the honey in check. It comes in a 270g jar and behaves like a cross between a marinade and a glaze, which is why it wants a two-stage cook.

Does honey marinade burn on the barbecue?

It will if you cook it over direct high heat from the start, because sugar colours and then blackens well before chicken is cooked through. Cook the food over moderate or indirect heat with most of the marinade shaken off, then brush a fresh layer on in the final three to five minutes. Hood down, treat the barbecue as an oven at around 180°C to 200°C.

Can you glaze a Christmas ham with a jarred marinade?

Yes. Score the fat, brush on a thin first coat, and add another two coats through the last 20 to 30 minutes of a moderate oven so the layers build rather than blacken. Thin it with a splash of orange juice if it is too stiff to brush. Take the ham out while the glaze is still glossy, since it darkens further as it rests.

Where to start

Start with the halloumi, because it takes three minutes and proves the point, then do the chicken thighs on a weekend before you commit to them on Christmas Day. Ottolenghi Smokey Honey Marinade is $22.95 for 270g. We taste everything we range before it goes on the shelf, orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our packing room in Corio just outside Geelong, and shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.