Shish Kabob Tips and Recipe
For my holidays I usually like to keep things simple like always having hot dogs, hamburgers, baked beans, corn on the cob and potato salad for the Fourth of July but even I every once in a while like to “eat out of the box” and try something different. How about some kabobs for a change this year?
We all know about them but I don’t think a lot of us make kabobs that often. We really should. Shish Kabobs are so quick and easy and you can have most of the ingredients prepared the day before.
You can barbecue the recipe below on the grill but you don’t have to barbecue all kabobs. If you have a couple of pieces of meat like chicken, hot dogs or steak left from grilling, make them into “cold kabobs” the next day. Layer your already cooked meat with fresh veggies or fruit. These would be great to wrap and take on a picnic in place of a sandwich.
Use chunks of melon, strawberries, pineapple (you can use canned) and, if it will be served right away, apples or bananas. For veggies use small onions, green and red peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli or cauliflower. Also if you will be serving it immediately, you could add cubes of cheese. The possibilities are endless.
For something fun and different, have a kabob bar and let everyone make up their own shish kabobs.
Use 2 skewers, holding them about half an inch apart to thread your items on the skewers. This will help to keep the ingredients from turning around on the skewers.
If you’ll be barbecueing them, soak the skewers for 30 minutes in water.
When cooking the shish kabobs, keep all the pieces of everything cut as close to the same size as you can.
Prepare as much as you can the day before. This will make your life easier the next day.
Barbecue Chicken Kabobs
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2 inch chunks
2 cups pineapple, chunks
1 green pepper, 1 1/2 inch chunks
1 red pepper, 1 1/2 inch chunks
Place all of these on the skewers.
Brush with equal parts barbecue sauce and concentrated orange juice that have been mixed.
Cook on medium high grill until chicken is done about 8-10 minutes. Brush occasionally with sauce.
Makes 4.
-Jill
photo by: kristinausk
I think these kabob ideas are so fun. I like the picture of the dessert kabobs. It looks like colored marshmallows and cake cut with cookie cutters, and strawberries. What a neat idea. I have a cake mix I bought with fourth of July add ins, and I can use cookie cutters to cut it up. Thanks for the inspiration.
went to the dollar store and bought 10 kabob cages. They go nicely on the bbq and last night after making 12 jars of jam I did not feel like doing much in the way of cooking so I took the boneless skinless chicken thighs popped a piece of vidalia onion into them and placed them in the cages. 3 to a cage then I cut up the rest of the onion some sweet potatoe and regular potatoes put them into another cage and onto the bbq.
This was a nice easy meal as Don decided paper plates were called for.
I discovered one thing and that is to keep the pieces small or they stick to the cage. We had shredded chicken and decided that the experiment was definitely not a company meal. Will have to work on that.
Also if you are using hard vegetables par boil them so they cook in the same length of time as the meat.
I like the idea of the cages since we are camping with little people and the skewers can poke and get very hot. This way each person can put in what they want and one person cooks them all.
But the skewers are also great fun so will definitely keep them around.
We have found that, while maybe not as “pretty”, it works better to keep items with similar cooking times on the same skewer–some of the more dense vegetables take longer to cook, so you can skewer them together and put them on the grill earlier.
We occasionally do breakfast at the beach, and we’ll bring kabobs to cook on the grill there, with ham, pineapple, green pepper and cherry tomatoes on the skewers. I’ll make up a large aluminum foil pan of cheesy eggs, and heat on the grill as the kabobs are searing. These along with donuts, coffee and cocoa, and even a chilly early morning at the beach is very pleasant.