How to stop marinade leaking out of the meat

We had the following email from a customer in Germany today:

Despite using the smallest needle, too much liquid runs out of the meat again. Do you have any ideas?

It’s a common problem, so here are our suggestions:

1. Make sure you are injecting downwards from the top of the meat, not from the side or underneath. Otherwise the marinade can run out of the hole.
2. Make sure the needle doesn’t poke out the other side of the meat, otherwise the marinade will run out the other end of the hole.
3. Try injecting less marinade.
4. If you are using the steak needle or the open-ended needle, make sure you slowly draw the injector out of the meat while you are slowly injecting marinade into the meat. Otherwise you can end up with too much marinade in one location.

The size of the needle doesn’t make a big difference to how much marinade runs out. For thicker cuts of meat the larger needles are generally better as the needle can poke all the way into the middle of the meat.