K is for Kabobs

A B C D E F G H I J . . .K! K is for Kabobs!

Our weather is grilling weather almost all year in Alabama. I know that some parts of the country and world say they are getting out the BarBQue, but in the deep south, we grill, on what some of you call a BarBQue, and we eat BBQ! In the south, we use the words "barbeque/BarBQue/BBQ" for the actual meat - could be pork or could be beef. Some places slice it and some places shred it and we love it. There are even BBQ competitions.

So those kabobs in the picture above were cooked outside in our courtyard on our big gas grill. Just FYI, many of us also have smokers - either a Big Green Egg or others. We have a Pit Barrel Cooker for smoking meat.

I don't have a recipe for Kabobs but I'll try to make one up as I go. First of all, get some "sticks/skewers" from the store or you can order these from Amazon. On the day you plan to make kabobs, soak the skewers in water for an hour or so beforehand. This keeps the sticks from burning on the grill. You could always be fancy and order metal skewers and wash and reuse them instead of using wooden skewers.

We like onions, mushrooms, zucchini, red, yellow, or green bell peppers, yellow squash, lemons (especially on chicken or shrimp), and sometimes cherry tomatoes. Kabobs can be made with boneless chicken breasts or boneless thighs or chunks of steak or shrimp. I've even seen kabobs made with Conecuh Sausage -- which is made in Alabama!! You can even make an all veggie kabob which I do with any leftover veggies that don't make it onto the meat skewers.

You want to cut your meat into pieces that are similar in thickness and size so they will cook evenly. I like to marinate my chicken in a little Ken's Light Caesar salad dressing with some Cavender's mixed in. Sometimes I'll google marinades for chicken and try something new - like a citrus marinade.

Remember that you are going to be threading a skewer through all of the items so you want to cut your vegetables so that they will stay on the skewer. Slice the lemons into wedges and the squash or zucchini into thicker circles. Slice the onions into wedges and then you can use the bigger pieces. I slice my peppers into 1 1/2 to 2 inch squares (I'm guessing!). I like to have something sturdier on each end - a lot of times I'll have a cherry tomato on one end and a mushroom on the top pointy end. The beauty is you get to pick which veggies you want to use. 

After marinating the meat, have your veggies pre-chopped into individual piles (a pile of peppers, a pile of onions, etc.). I try to make sure that each kabob has about the same amount of meat and veggies. You don't want to serve a kabob to someone that only has one tiny chunk of meat -- I usually aim for about 4 pieces of meat on each kabob.

Start threading the meat and veggies onto the kabobs. We usually give each kabob a spray of olive oil pam before placing on preheated grill. Our grill gets incredibly hot - like 600 degrees or something. Use a meat thermometer to determine desired doneness. 

If I'm serving these to dinner guests, I make extras. Every person will not eat two, but you want to have enough so that if someone does want two . . .it is available.

These are delicious served alongside baked potatoes or over rice. If we make them just for us, we might just have kabobs and salad.

Have you ever made kabobs? Too much trouble? Worth it? What is your favorite meat on a kabob?