Schwartz Grill Mates - A Review

Schwartz Mojito Lime Marinade Mix with turkey and prawns

It's not often that the UK enjoys such weather that BBQ is possible almost every night for weeks but somehow we have managed to go through the whole period without setting the coals alight at home. Perhaps we were feeling a little uninspired but all this changed when the lovely people at Schwartz sent me a package of their Herb & Spice Blends and Grill Mates packets to try out.

You may think why is a food blogger reviewing ready-made packets but there are a couple of reasons. Most people aren't potential future Masterchef contestants and it's a good way of trying out new flavours without the hassle and expense of buying lots of ingredients. This is a particularly good option if you are on holiday and without your usual stock of ingredients and don't won't to buy extra. Both the Cajun and Smokey Texan only require water and oil to be added to the mix.

We decided to try the Mojito Lime Marinade Mix. The instructions suggest using chicken, beef or King prawns but we used turkey (cheaper than chicken at any time and also on offer) and raw King prawns (again on offer and cooking from raw means less chance of them ending up like rubber). Being a Mojito mix it does ask for the addition of some white rum. Somewhere in a box in the garage there is a bottle which came with us when we moved house 11 years ago but for many reasons we decided not to look for it. However, each packet comes with two recipe ideas so we went for the second option. This just needed some oil, honey and lime juice. It did say 50ml of lime juice which I did have a bit of a panic over as I had bought just one big lime but found that 50ml is about the quantity of juice you get from one lime.

Quite simply you put the packet contents in a bowl, add the extra ingredients and your choice of meat and fish and leave to marinate for at least 15 minutes. You can leave overnight if you are using just meat but does it warn that if you are using seafood not to marinate for longer than 30 minutes. I guess this is because the acidic nature of the lime will start to cook the prawns.

As we were using prawns we decided to cut up the turkey and put them both on kebab sticks to cook. They all cooked really well without problem and we used the extra marinade left in the bowl to baste them.

After it was all cooked I served it with my Potato Salad with Chives and it was time for the all-important verdict. Basically everybody enjoyed it and there was clean plates at the end. My Daughter thought the marinade went better with the prawns but my Husband and I preferred it with the turkey. Son just kept munching everything on his plate. The recipe did suggest beef as an option but I'm not sure this would have worked very well with the citrus flavours. A better alternative would be pork. It does say there is a hint of cayenne chilli pepper which there is but nothing that is going to burn your head off. All-in-all a success which was easy to make and nice to eat. One final note – if the weather does suddenly turn on you and you don't want to BBQ holding an umbrella all the mixes can also be grilled or baked. A good British back-up plan.

Schwartz sent be the mixes and blends for free and no payment was received. I was under obligation to give a positive review and the opinions are my own and the JibberJabberUK taste test panel (my husband and children).