Shish Kebabs are Shish Ke-awesome
Grilled on February 22nd, 2006 in Beef, GeneralI’m a big fan of shish kebabs because they’re easy to prepare, easy to grill, and everyone loves Shish Kebabs.
A whole lot of beef, chicken, or pork in cube-form.
Garlic, Onions, Mushrooms, Green peppers
1/2 cp. Olive oil
Salt, Pepper, Soy Sauce
1. Put the beef, oil, salt, pepper and soy sauce into a plastic bag to marinate for a few hours.
2. Cut the onions, mushrooms, and green peppers into pieces that will fit nicely on a skewer.
3. Alternate the vegetables and the meat on the kebabs, making sure to cap things off with a vegetable (meat will slide around, so you need the vegetable “bookends”). Don’t pack things too tightly because the meat will expand as you cook it.
4. Slap those babies on the grill!
The meat will be relatively thin in nature so a few minutes on each side will do just fine. You might want to brush on some flavoring as you cook but don’t use the marinade because it contains some of the uncooked juices from the raw meat.
My kebabs, though tasty, are pretty pedestrian - anyone have any interesting recipes for marinades?
Add more goodies! Try chunks of pineapple (fresh, not canned), broccoli heads, thick slices of Roma tomato, bacon (weave a strip back and forth between the other ingredients), eggplant, yellow or Zucchini squash, sweet potatoes… Anything and everything you can think of to put on a skewer lends itself to kabobs.
OK, you know me, once I get started…
Don’t be afraid to baste with the marinade. It gets cooked right along with the food. Just don’t baste in the last five minutes of cooking.
And speaking of marinades, for a Polynesian flavor, instead of soy sauce, try Kikkoman’s Teriyaki sauce. The ginger flavors in it go great with any grilled meat or veggies.
Instead of just “salt and pepper”, try a Cajun seasoning like Tony Cachere’s or Zataraine’s. Go easy, both have a lot of salt, and adding salt to meat prior to cooking dries the meat and makes the surface of the grilled meat tough. Remember that soy sauce also has a lot of salt in it, so it’s poorly suited for a meat marinade, especially for beef.
Add your “salty stuff” after the meat comes off the grill. You’ll like the end result better. For veggies, season at will before cooking.