Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Excellent Kabobs, If I Do Say So

I mentioned yesterday that I made kabobs for our Bauer BBQ.  I usually don't measure out what I put in the marinade, but I figured with the diversity of palates present, if I added too much of one thing or not enough of another, someone would think I was just some rookie kabobist. 
The vegetables were the same for both:  mushrooms, zucchini, summer squash and onions.  I chose the squashes because they were free from my garden.  And they will stand up to marinades.  And they don't cook super fast and burn.  There's nothing worse than burned stuff when you're trying to eat a kabob- thus no peppers on mine.

For each type of meat:

2 of those styrofoam containers of whole mushrooms (I snap the stems out before using)
2 zucchini
whatever yellow squash you have on hand, I didn't have much
2 onions

Cut everything  up in chunks for skewering and grilling.  They should be able to be eaten in one mouthful, but not super tiny or the marinade will just disintegrate them.

For what I thought was about 60 people, I bought 4 steaks of varying sizes and one of those long packets of chicken breasts that seemed to have an endless number of breasts.  They weren't the brand I usually  buy, so I don't know how many there were.  I think I ended up with  more chicken than beef.

For the chicken marinade with that quantity of chicken:

1.5 cups olive oil
juice of 2 whole lemons, every last drop
fresh greek oregano and lemon thyme from my garden- no idea the quantity, but A LOT
1 c. white vinegar

Throw the vegetables and meat into the marinade in a big bowl so you can really mix it all up.  Let it sit for a few minutes.  Then try to get it all into 2 large ziplock bag and make sure some of the marinade makes it into each bag.  Refrigerate overnight.

For the beef marinade with that quantity of beef:

3/4 c. soy sauce
1.5 c. olive oil
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
juice of 2 whole lemons, every last drop
2 T. dry mustard
1/2 c. white vinegar
dash of ground cloves


Throw the vegetables and meat into the marinade in a big bowl so you can really mix it all up. Let it sit for a few minutes. Then try to get it all into 2 large ziplock bag and make sure some of the marinade makes it into each bag. Refrigerate overnight.

In both cases, I added a little extra vinegar when it looked like it might not be quite enough liquid. 

The next day, pour them back into the bowl before you skewer them so you can have a variety of stuff to skewer and you're not fumbling with those plastic bags.  I always start each kabob with a mushroom because I feel like it gives some stability to the line of food, until I run out of mushrooms.  Toward the end, I ran out of all of the vegetables and did a couple of kabobs of just meat and a few people were happy to just get a stick of meat. 

I skewered them in the morning and put them on large trays with foil over them and let them stay in the refrigerator for that day.




I used the wooden skewers you can get at the grocery store because I must have made 100 kabobs and I do not have fancy metal ones by the 100s.  Some people say to keep the sticks from burning, you should soak the kabobs first, but that has not worked for me, so I do not do it.  I had them all bend and break when I did that. 

I heated the gas grill for a while and then put it to medium.  I did both meats at the same time, turning them often, and can't tell you how long it took.  I didn't want anything to burn, but all had grill marks and looked done.  Cut into a few pieces to see what the progress looks like.  I did put the cover down for a few minutes when I first started and then I opened and closed it a lot as I was turning and moving them.  I couldn't do every single kabob at once, so as the first ones finished, I put them on a plate with foil over them to try to keep them warm until they were all done. 

Lots of complaints and refusals, as you can see.


Linking here and here and here and here.

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