Cook Date: June 28, 2022
If you are a fan of Ted Lasso, you may hear the word “kabob” as the English pronunciation “kabab”. If you aren’t a fan of the Ted Lasso series, then you haven’t seen it – you might want to change that. To keep things fresh, I’ll use both pronunciations
Back in June I recovered from my first hit of COVID by the end of the month so I made up some kabobs. Then the next week I got hit with a rebound infection that put me out for another 6 weeks. At this remove (I’m writing this in mid November) I forget what marinade I used; but I imagine it was vegetable oil, soy sauce, garlic and coriander.
But the marinade took a back seat to testing out the cooking on my then still kinda new grill. On my Weber grill years ago I used the Weber Elevation Systems (you can see it in action on my grill here). Unfortunately I got rid of that system when I sold the grill and they are too expensive for me to replace. Since then I’ve tried various rack and skewer systems. One was too small; another was too large with enormous skewers that overwhelmed the “skewees”; the rack on another didn’t do a good enough job of allowing the skewers to be flipped.
Here is the setup I used for this cook. Thin-ish skewers with a tab that helps slide the food off the skewers and onto the plate, and a rack with “V”s that allowed for flipping. Keeping the meat on one side of the grill and vegetables on the other allows for adjusting heat for each.
How about a closer look.
As I said, this was the first time I cooked skewers on this grill. The meat kabobs weren’t brown enough so I put them directly on the grill for a moment.
As you can see from the next picture the browning was a bit uneven. Look at the vegetables and you’ll see the end toward the back got plenty of heat while those on the front didn’t get cooked through.
I’ve cooked plenty of kababs over the years and it takes just a bit of practice on a new grill to get the temperature right. At the same time I thought, why use a rack system at all; why not just lay the skewers right on the grill? Or, in a complete change, it might be easier but just as good to do a stir-fry type setup on the griddle unit I use for smash burgers. I wouldn’t need to lace all the food on the skewers; just toss the vegetables in a bowl with some olive oil and salt and then toss everything on the griddle and cook it up. Not as much flair as kabobs, but I get a little nervous putting rocket hot skewers on guests plates anyway.
Regardless, dinner was served and it was good. Served with coconut rice
When I finally recovered from COVID in August we went on vacation (more on that later) and vacation again (more on THAT later as well) before I knew it, prime grilling season was over. So I may experiment with skewers directly on the grill and/or on the griddle. But that is a few months down the road.
Result: 3 stars ★★★ Kabobs range from 3 to 5 stars and these were good, not great.
