We have patiently waiting all week for both the weather to warm up and for Joe to get off work early so that we could try soem of this Nando’s marinade out on some chicken on the grill.

Today’s forecast: Joe out early and 68 degrees F.

Grill time, baby!

So what to use with this marinade? We decided to stick with the “Chickenland” theme as per the bottle title, we opted to go with some boneless, skinless chicken breasts to make this marinade work. First, a quick scan of the ingredients just for the sake of completeness:

Ingredients: water, onions, garlic, tomato paste, soya sauce (7%)(Water, hydrolyzed vegetable protein [soya], salt, artificial flavor [soya], caramel powder, citric acid, methyl hydroxybenzoate [preservative]), sunflower oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, paprika, food modified starch, african birds eye peppers (peri-peri peppers), xanthan gum, propylene glycol alginate, potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate (preservatives)

This sauce has more preservatives than we typically like to see, but it has many of the same winning formula from their winning Medium Hot Sauce, which we did like. None of the ones we saw made the “bad” list, so we’ll let it slide for now. The hot ingredients (cayenne and african birds eye peppers) were fairly far down the list, so we were a little surprised to see that for a sauce labeled as “hot.” It wouldn’t take too long to realize that our suspicion about that was indeed correct.

Taste: Even though we weren’t going to eat the marinade straight out of the jar, we had to take a little taste just so we would know what it tasted like before it hit the fire on the grill. We each tasted just a little dab off the tips of our fingers, and each noticed the lemons and garlic most prominently. With just a hint of heat, we’d be hard-pressed to call this “hot.” In fact, we’ll tag this sauce at no more than a 3/10 for heat. Well, the good taste made this discovery to us a fact that we didn’t blink about, so we proceeded with our marinaded chicken right to our waiting gas grill:

You can see above the chicken gettin’ grilled for our dinner enjoyment. Heck, those looked yummy even before they were done cooking! We let these chicken breasts sit in the marinade all afternoon before cooking them, so they had more than enough time to absorb the great taste of this sauce.

This is a look at the “finished product,” and wow did it impress. Grilling mellowed out the tartness of the lemon and brought out the garlic and a bit of the peppery taste, although still not with much heat. A little tingle was all we got at dinner, but it even impressed the mother-in-law with the great taste. We actually rather liked how that the taste of the marinade was so subtle compared to some, and that it would likely be good on a number of other dishes and meats as well.

Overall recommendation: Another solid performer by the great folks at Nando’s, and we were so glad to get around to using our grill to try it. Not really all that hot, despite what the label says, it has oodles of great taste. Mostly lemon and garlicky, you’ll be pleased at how grilling brings out the peri-peri flavor for all your meals. We’re just sad that we used it all up and have none left! Order some, warm up your grill, and give it a try for yourself. Enjoy!

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