Holen One Farms Barbecue Marinade for Grilled Foods

I've been on a quest to find the best barbecue sauces, rubs, and marinades. One company that caught my eye was Holen One Farms. I gave their bbq sauce the big five stars. Everyone here thought it was a fabulous barbecue sauce.

Holen One Farms marinade is good. It's a mild and very non-offensive marinade. It would work for most any meats and for most any guests. The flavor is good, and it does add moisture to the grilled meats.


I do note that that Holen One marinade is a thin marinade with a high oil content, so especially if you grill over charcoal, you can expect some major flares as you can see here.

If you get charcoal flares, then top off with the grill lid and shut down the vents to cut air flow. If it's an open hibachi style grill, then you have more issues. You can have a cup of water and sprinkle out the flares or pull the meat off if the grill starts to get too hot with major flames.

I'd be more likely to recommend Holen One marinade for gas grillers where there's a drip guard and less chance for big flare ups with oil drips. Because, this is a thin and high oil marinade.

You'll also get a less intense flavor than if you use a bottled marinade like Kraft Zesty Italian dressing (oil based - and not the creamy kind which will burn). That's a matter of taste, so for anyone who finds bottled Italian a bit overpowering, Holen One is layered nicely but let's the meat flavor shine. It does not add a lot of flavor but does add moisture and more subtle flavor experience.

Don't use Holen One marinade over charcoal, unless you're experienced with temp control. On gas, you catch a break to some extent but may still need to adjust with the lid and temp controls. This is one hot burning marinade.

On a side note, NO, I did not burn those rib eye steaks. I shot the photo fast and moved them away from the flare to finish them off. But, I've been grilling over charcoal for over 35 years.

UPDATE:

The Holen family got in touch with a really nice note thanking me for reviewing the marinade and the Holen One sauce glaze and for giving fair and balanced opinions.

They also gave me some more info on the marindade which I thought I'd share:

"When using the Holen One Farms Marinade with open flame grilling it is particularly important to follow the instructions as to the amount to be used. We recommend an ounce per pound to be added to the meat in a ziplock bag, which is then sealed and allowed to be taken into the meat for at least 4 hours and preferably over night. This will allow all the marinade to be taken into the meat and a minimum or flareups will occur. If there is still a significant amount of marinade surrounding the meat after the suggested rest time in the refrigerator, you are probably using too much marinade."

Appreciate the extra info, and I need to round up my reading glasses (-: I tend to go heavy on the marinade. I'll try again and use a lighter touch when I pour. We did have a lot of marinade on our meat.

Holen One Farms Dipping and Glazing Sauce - Yum!

I love to try out new barbecue sauces and was excited to get the products I ordered from Holen One Farms. In addition to the Holen One barbecue sauce (dipping and glazing), they also have a marinade which I hope to try out tomorrow with steaks and a rub I want to check out on a smoked Boston butt.


First I fired up with the Portable Kitchen (PK grill) and got out my new Cusinart silicone basting brush which is so much nicer than the bristle brushes which always manage to end up stuck somewhere not so special. The Cuisinart grill brush is a tad large for the boneless, skinless chicken breasts or looks so, but it worked out fine. I just didn't dip as deep. It's great, also, for bigger barbecue saucing jobs too, of course.

Often I marinate my chicken to ensure moisture and to add some flavor, but I wanted to get the full flavor of Holen One Farms barbecue sauce. So, I just sprayed the grates with a little Pam grilling spray and put the chicken on.

This is a tomato based sauce, so I didn't sauce the chicken beforehand like a marinade. A lot of folks make that mistake, and they have chicken that's no cooked in the middle and burned on the outside as that sugar in the sauce can scorch in a heartbeat.

With these smaller pieces of chicken, I grilled one side until I could see a white color coming up the sides nice and then sauced the up or raw side. The chicken in thin slices like this is close done when you see the cooked part coming up the sides.

I flipped all the chicken with the raw and sauced side down and grilled for a couple of minutes while saucing the grilled top sides with grill marks. Then, I made one last flip for under a minute just to set the sauce on the first grilled side. That was over on a low heat part of the grill as I usually offset coals to do these kinds of tricks that make the grilled foods both taste better and look prettier.


Here's the grilled chicken lathered with Holen One Farm barbecue sauce right ready to come off the grill.

The sauce smelled so good (along with the charcoal) that the dad-person wandered over to see what we were griling up, and he stuck around to try the new bbq sauce as well. I forever grill up more than we can eat, so visitors are always welcome.

My teen son was the first to check in, "Hey, this is good sauce." His Dad then took a couple of bites and said, "Yep. It's a winner."

Holen One Barbecue Dipping and Glazing Sauce is a very nice all-purpose and company barbecue sauce. The flavor is clearly a bump up from mass marketed barbecue sauces at the grocery store, but Holen One did not go over the top and add too much heat or other strange ingredients that put it in a niche category. It appealed to my son who likes mild, his dad who goes medium, and I'm a hot sauce lover but thought this was one fine barbecue sauce.

That's another for the barbecue sauce favorites list which is slowly growing. There are loads of barbecue sauces out there, but I find few that rock the whole house. Holen One is a score!