If you’re looking for the best salmon marinade, you’re in the right place. This easy salmon marinade is made with simple pantry ingredients and turns ordinary salmon filets into something incredibly flavorful, tender, and juicy especially on the grill!

Whether you’re cooking salmon for a weeknight dinner or a summer cookout, this marinade is the secret to grilled salmon that everyone loves.

What Makes This the Best Salmon Marinade

This salmon marinade works because it contains the perfect balance of flavor (citrus, honey, and savory) while keeping the salmon tender and juicy. It adds subtle flavor while still allowing the flavor of the salmon to shine:

• Balanced flavor: Sweet honey, bright orange juice, and savory soy sauce create a marinade that’s flavorful but not heavy.
• Tender, juicy salmon: The citrus helps lightly tenderize the salmon while the oil locks in moisture during grilling.
• Quick marinating time: You only need 20 minutes to infuse big flavor so there’s no long wait required.
• Perfect for grilling: This marinade caramelizes beautifully on the grill without burning or drying out the fish.
• Versatile and foolproof: Use this salmon marinade for grilling, baking, or pan-searing with equally great results.

If you’ve ever struggled with bland or dry salmon, this easy salmon marinade is the simple fix you’ll want to keep using!

Ingredients You’ll Need

This salmon marinade comes together with a handful of simple ingredients that balance sweet, savory, and citrusy flavors perfectly. Each one plays a role in making the salmon tender, juicy, and full of flavor.

• Garlic: Add bold, savory flavor to the salmon marinade
• Orange Juice: Brings bright citrus flavor and natural sweetness to the marinade.
• Honey: Adds a touch of sweetness and helps balance the savory ingredients in the salmon marinade.
• Sweet Chili Sauce: Adds gentle heat and depth of flavor to the marinade.
• Sesame Oil: Adds rich, nutty flavor and enhances the marinade.
• Soy Sauce: Provides saltiness and umami, forming the flavorful base of the salmon marinade.
• Salmon Filets: Look for vibrant pink color and the filets soak up the marinade beautifully.

Cheesy Stuffed Grilled Peppers

These Grilled Cheesy Stuffed Peppers are the ultimate indulgent appetizer! Tender yellow peppers are filled with melty queso fresco and seasoned to perfection, then grilled to golden, bubbly bliss.

The result? A smoky, cheesy bite that’s slightly charred on the outside and oozing with flavor on the inside. Perfect for a cozy side dish or a fun, flavorful appetizer!

Watch How These Stuffed Peppers are Made…

That’s right cream cheese jalapeno peppers, you’ve got competition. Bring it! Or don’t because I totally don’t think there’s an actual winner since they are different, but this is my personal favorite for all summer long. I hope that by the end of the post I will have you convinced that this really is the best grilled stuffed pepper recipe.

Making This Recipe

First thing first, this recipe is one that my sweet brother in law, Jake taught Cade years ago and Cade actually had to beg me to try. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you may have noticed that there aren’t really any spicy recipes on here. Yup, I’m a wimp. I don’t enjoy spicy. If it has great flavor I can kind of understand but I still don’t enjoy it. Well, Cade and I had just had our first baby and within a week we were on our way to California to do summer sales.

It was horrible and such a long drive. And don’t worry, we had to take both our cars so I drove one and my sweet husband drove the other. For anyone that has just had a baby, just think about driving from Utah to San Diego with a newborn you were trying to nurse for the first time ever, not to mention one you had just given birth to. Yup!

Anyway, that’s where Cade had to beg me to try these cheesy stuffed peppers which he promised would not be spicy. In fact, they are really yummy and we all know that queso fresco cheese is my favorite. The biggest thing to remember is that the seeds hold the spice which means you want to pull them out but also it can burn your fingers so use plastic gloves or be careful and use a paring knife to get them out. But truly, if I love them, you for sure will. And they are so easy for summer grilling which is awesome.

Ingredients for Cheese Stuffed Grilled Peppers

This recipe is easily scalable depending on the size of y

Smoky BBQ Rub

Perfect for beef, chicken and especially pork, this Homemade BBQ Rub is what makes grilling so amazingly delicious. Just dig in!

We love this on grilled chicken, smoked brisket or pork ribs! It’s great on everything! Heck, I’d add it to roasted brussel sprouts or broccoli and it would be amazing! Ooh, and I totally need to do a salmon recipe with this rub too!

Why Make You’re Own Rub

In my opinion, rubs are a tastier alternative to marinating meat as they give a fuller flavor. We prefer to dry rub the meat so that it can get all flavorful before any BBQ sauce is even added. In fact, sometimes we enjoy meats dry because they are so good on their own.

Making your own seasoning blend is the best way to go since you can fine tune the ingredients to exactly what your palate is craving. Whether or not if you feel like having a sweet, spicy, or smoky flavor — or a mix of them all! — it is very easy to do when you start with the right base. It is great on meats that are smoked, grilled or roasted.

How to Make a Dry Rub

When creating any bbq dry rub, the base typically starts with your sugars and salts abd then you add spices for flavoring. 

Sugar

There are many different kinds of sugar (brown sugar, dark brown sugar, turbinado, regular refined sugar and so on) that will give you different flavors. Experiment to see what you like best, and keep in mind that it may be a combination of them as well.

Salt

There are a lot of different salts as well (kosher salt, sea salt, table salt…etc). We prefer kosher salt, but if you don’t have it, you can use table salt. See section below for the differences in salt.

Spices

After getting you sugars and salts picked out, move onto choosing how much and what kind of pepper to use, as well as the other spices that are typical among many rubs, like cumin, chili powder and paprika. Then, start adding in combinations of other spices to make it to your very own liking.

The best part about making a barbecue spice blend is that if you start with very small increments then it’s hard to screw up. When I first started playing around with how much to put in, I forgot to write down what I put in and how much, so don’t make that mistake :).

Here is one of our rub recipes that we really enjoy with any meat.

What’s in This Homemade BBQ Rub?

As I mentioned above, there are so many flavor combinations to choose from when creating a bbq dry rub. Here’s what we used in this particular recipe:

• Kosher Salt
• Brown Sugar
• Black Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Onion Powder
• Chili Powder
• Smoked Paprika
• Thyme
• Grou

Easy Traeger Smoked Chicken Breast

Looking for a simple and delicious way to cook chicken breast on your Traeger? Look no further! This easy Traeger smoked chicken breast recipe will have your taste buds singing and your dinner guests asking for seconds.

Smoked chicken breast doesn’t get any better or easier than this! We are obsessed with smoking on our Traeger smoker, and with a few tricks these smoked chicken breasts turn out perfectly tender and moist every time.

Looking for more? Try our recipe for how to smoke a whole chicken in the Traeger, smoked chicken thighs, or our smoked chicken wings.

Unlike other chicken breast recipes, these are totally flavorful chicken breasts that never come out dry! We are letting you in on all our smoking tips as well as our smoked chicken dry rub recipe. Don’t miss it!

Traeger Smoker

Ok, have you used a Traeger grill yet? Or seen it be used? They always have Traeger demos going on here at our Costco, so go check it out at your local Costco or wherever you can find Traegers. And the next time you find a deal on a Traeger, get on board the Traeger train with us! These beauties are life-changing!

We’ve already shared our Brazilian Smoked Tri Tip, Smoked Pulled Pork, and Apple Pecan Smoked Turkey, so we were definitely due for a smoked chicken recipe!

Let’s skip all the small talk and get right to the details of smoking the best chicken breasts of your life!

Smoked Chicken Rub

This dish starts with our smoked chicken rub recipe that adds loads of smoky flavor to these boneless skinless chicken breasts. There is a little sweet, a little salt, a little heat, and every flavor you are looking for in the perfect Traeger smoked chicken breast. Here are the rub ingredients you’ll need:

• Brown Sugar
• Turbinado Sugar (if you can’t find turbinado sugar, just use more brown sugar)
• Celery Seed
• Paprika
• Kosher Salt
• Black Pepper
• Cayenne Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Onion Powder

Pat dry the chicken breasts with paper towels and then smother the top of them w

Build your own hot dog bar this summer with four awesome combinations – Chicago-Style, Hawaiian, Green Chile Queso, and BBQ Sundaes!

I first shared these recipes in the summer of 2020 and these combinations remain our favorite hot dog toppings.

Are you as excited for summer as we are right now? Spring felt like it lasted 6 months this year. We may have had to cancel our summer-long road trip, but I’ve been brainstorming ways to make staying local more fun.

One of the things we’ve done this year is to fully embrace the awesomeness that is summer in Ohio. We’ve spent so much time outdoors already and let me tell you, compared to life in Phoenix in June-July-August? It feels like an entirely different world.

All five of us are big fans of the hot dog. Most of the time, I’m pretty happy with a classic dog topped with just ketchup, mustard, and relish. But other times? It can be a whole lot of fun to mix things up.

Hot Dog Bar Ideas

Step One: Grill the hot dogs and toast the buns.

Step Two: Set the toppings out while the hot dogs are on the grill.

Step Three: Let each person assemble their hot dogs with as much or as little of each topping as they like best.

I hope that you love these hot dog toppings as much as we do!

However you are assembling your hot dogs, you’ll want to check out these summer side dishes to finish off a terrific meal or barbecue with friends.

If you’re grilling and enjoying the weather outside, these salads without mayonnaise are always a hit. From Creamy Pasta Salad to Cucumber Tomato Salad, Tangy Italian Pasta Salad to this Balsamic and Basil Berry Salad, the odds are good that you’re going to find at least one of these salads in my fridge for the next few months.

Spicy Hot Dogs

As much as my family loves green chile, this hot dog topping was a guaranteed w