O.K. Lets just be frank here shall we? A lot of these recipes I post aren't life changing or innovative. They're the best of the classics. Do I like stuff other than standard fare? Um, yeah. But those aren't necessarily the recipes I spend years perfecting.
Like Shish kebabs!
Yeah, I said it. Shish kebabs. I know ... I know ... right up there with shrimp cocktails and Baked Alaska in terms of modern fare. But I don't give a crap. I like Shishkebabs, shrimp cocktails and Baked Alaska. Food they set on fire at the table? I mean what's more fun than that??? Only crispy fried onions in a can!
I like meatloaf too. Made with Country Style Stuff 'n Such. Suck on that Foodies.
Of course I do balance it with some newer lighter fare, but if I'm having a crappy day I'm ending it with roast beef or hamburgers, not a celeriac puree and tiny diced pieces of flavoured air.
So I've taken to perfecting the classics. The sort of thing our mom's would have made while standing over the stove with a menthol smoke in their mouths and a spiked Tab in their hands.
Like Shish kebabs. Little blobs of food impaled with a stick. Couldn't you just salivate?
I perfected the marinade and the Teriyaki sauce for them. The marinade you make the day of, and the Teriyaki sauce recipe can be doubled and then frozen. When you need it just pull it out of the freezer, dig out however much you need (for Shish kebabs, stir fry, whatever) and get to it.
You can use whatever meat and vegetables you like for Shishkebabs, but I prefer this 'cause I like the classics. Have I mentioned that?
Chicken
Pineapple
Red Peppers
Red Onion
Marinade for the chicken:
3 Tbsp. soya sauce
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. apricot or peach jam
1 Tbsp. minced onion
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
Mix ingredients together then marinate cubed chicken for 1 hr. or more.
Teriyaki Sauce:
Mix ingredients then simmer
1 cup pineapple juice
½ cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons soya sauce ( I use 2 light soya sauce, 2 regular soya sauce )
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 ½ teaspoons ground ginger
½ teaspoon salt
2 cloves minced garlic
cornstarch mixed with water to thicken sauce if desired.
Impale your chosen meat and vegetable pieces.
Stick in an oven heated to 425 degrees. Cook 7 minutes, then flip and cook another 5 minutes or so (depending on the size of your chicken pieces)
When chicken is almost done, remove from oven and brush with Teriyaki sauce. Broil Shish kebabs until sauce thickens and becomes sticky and glazed. 2 - 3 minutes.
Serve on a bed of rice with a side bowl of the Teriyaki sauce. 'Cause you can never have enough sauce.
Oh! And yes, you can BBQ these - you just have to keep an eye to make sure they don't burn.
Light up a menthol, pop a can open and enjoy!
→Follow me on Instagram where I often make a fool of myself←
I have a tall straight -ish rosemary bush. I clipped a bunch of long branches off, pulled off all but a tuft of rosemary on one end (put the rosemary itself on a cookie sheet in toaster oven, dried in about 3 hours at 150 F.) Then cut the branches into 7-9 inch- ish sticks.
Soaked those for 30 minutes and used as the kabob sticks!
I did use a knife to scrape a pokey end of each stick for easier kabobing. And sometimes I actually remembered to use the pointy end lol.
I didn't use any marinade / sauce this time, but out of curiosity I used some leftover Italian flavored cornstarch, flour, breadcrumb mix to roll most everything in. Then drizzled with oil before baking. (350F about 24 minutes.)
I got mini sweet peppers for the first time, cut those in half, shoved a (floureded, cooked, thawed from frozen) shrimp into the ends of them before skewering. Put a piece of floured chicken in the other half of the pepper. Also used red potato bits, rolled in the flour, those were hard to skewer, think I'll try microwaving them a bit first next time. Forget to get onions or tiny tomatoes. *sigh* Did get mushrooms, zucchini, and couldn't find sausage so used a chopped hotdog. It was all pretty good. :)
But hey, food on sticks is always better, right? Lol ;)
Normally, for "sauce" I'll mix spices, oil, lemon or lime juice, & maybe a splash of vinegar (& maybe liquid smoke) and drizzle or baste everything before baking (but after skewering.)
Gee, I must try these kebobs in the oven! I'm in a condo now with no bbq. Thanks for the recipe.
Just wanted to add, Karen, that I'm enjoying the pretty snowflakes on your easier-on-the-eyes grey screen! The yellow text is still a bit hard to read but it's no big deal as I just enlarge it. It's a small price to pay for the (glare-less) grey background! :)
First of all, YES, I'm STILL trying to read all the old posts, in fits and spurts obviously.
My solution for the meat spinning on the skewers is to use 2 skewers per Kebab. Not incredibly cost-efficient, but neither is half-cooked meat.
Okay, I have a question regarding your recipes. Where is the printable version located on your site? I have to highlight what I want and it comes out all janky. Know what I mean?
Thank you,
Pam
p.s. Have I told you how much I love your blog?
Hi Pam, Only some of my recipes have printable versions. When I started the blog I wasn't doing them and now I just don't have time to go back and make printable versions of them all. Personally what I do when I come across a recipe on a site, I just bookmark it. I have a whole bookmark folder labelled "recipes". I also cut and paste the entire page into an email and have another "recipes" folder there just in case the website I originally got the recipe from ever disappears. ~ karen!
Yay! So I made this recipe yesterday, and man-oh, was it delicious!! I absolutely adored it, and the guy loved it, too! So there you go!
Very tasty! That Teriyaki sauce is amazing!!!!!!!!!
Dear Karen,
I've been perusing your posts for about 3 weeks and am still finding gems. I've got 4 "Monarchs-to-be" eggs resting their little selves on their milkweed limbs in a vase on my kitchen cabinet, ready to make my very own indoor fire pit (found everything super cheap - Yea!) and put together a candle in a glass on a glass candle holder with some beautiful plastic gems daintily glued to the front of the candle glass in the shape of a birthday cake with a candle on top to give a good friend as a gift for her upcoming birthday!
Whew! I'm worn out; which is usually how I feel after just reading your posts, much less doing them. Needless to say, you are freaking amazing. A woman after my heart and so there, it's your's...I love the posts because they are so real, so honest, so FUNny, too. I could go on and usually do; however, not tonight!
I wanted to add 2 suggestions to the previous posts regarding your Shish-kebabs post:
1--I learned a while ago to soak bamboo skewers in water prior to threading on the meat and stuff; helps keep them from burning, especially if they are being grilled or broiled.
2--Also, I cut whatever meat I'm using into chunky strips and thread the pieces onto the skewers rather than plain using plain square-shaped chunks. Seems to make a difference with the whole flipping over trouble that was mentioned.
My worry with the toothpick suggestion is that the outside ends would burn/break off and the diner might get a 'bite' they weren't counting on. Just a thought.
Another thought and then I'm done for the night. You have made shopping a whole new experience for me now. I went to the Dollarama yesterday and cruised the aisles 'channeling' you a la Shirley MacLaine sort of. Kept turning the corner and saying, "Hmmmm....wonder what Karen would do with those thingy-ma-jigs over there." Thank you for adding something to my world - I thank you and Dollarama thanks you ($96.38 later! My highest total yet!).
Rhonda! Thanks for the incredibly enthusiastic comment! Good for you on getting the butterfly thing going and not just thinking about it. I didn't mention the soaking of the bamboo skewers because I don't broil my kebabs, I bake them and the skewers don't even come close to burning when you do them that way. But yes, when I BBQ or broil, I would soak. And ... when you slice your meat into strips and weave them on the skewer it's a satay! (not a kebab) I often do peanut chicken satays and that's exactly how I do them. The other advantage is they cook wayyyy faster. Re: the toothpick thing, I can't even remember what it's referring to, LOL. (old post) But if it's in reference to the kebabs I cook in the oven, there's no chance of burning so no worries. Usually if I aim to hurt someone with a toothpick, I mainly just stick them in the eye with it anyway. ~ karen!
I like to think I made these in true Karen style. I wrote them on my menu for the week, went shopping to prepare, then when the day came to make them I realized I had about a tablespoon of soy sauce left. Awesome. So I had to use an internet sourced substitute and just kinda...fudge it. I also didn't have peanut oil, but I figured canola would do just fine. Oh and I didn't make it as kebobs, I just marinated and slathered the sauce on whole pieces of chicken (aren't you impressed with my expert recipe following skills?) And guess what?! This was delicious! The sauce was super good and I'm totally going to make it again (because I'd really like to taste it with REAL soy sauce). Thanks! You rock!
Is soya sauce the same thing as soy sauce? I've looked for soya sauce everywhere I've been since I saw this recipe and cannot find SOYA sauce or anyone who knows what it is/where to find it.
Yes Leslie, Soy and Soya sauce are the same thing! Sorry for the confusion. - karen
Hi Karen
I have always meant to comment on your picture.
You look like a super model and you are also wearing what looks like a tiffany necklace and you are holding a PIKE!!
You are insane! Those things are the most feared fish of the north with teeth like a dog and could probably bite your damn finger off!
I can't even look at them. They look back at you, like they're saying:"i could bite your damn finger off" EWWW!!
Just for that picture alone, you are my hero
My mom didn't smoke menthols and didn't drink Tab-- It was L&M's and frozen dacquiris all the way. But your post made me all wistful anyway.
Oh. It was about food?
Hey Karen, just came across your site via D*S- Love your blog!! am bookmarking for future reference. :)
Thanks GB! Welcome aboard. - karen
Yum, yum, yummy! I forgot all about shish kebobs! We used to eat them regularly as a kid in the 70's. They are timeless. Putting it on the meal rotation for next week.
Ya know, whenever I've made kebobs - the chicken always flips when I go to turn them, so one side gets super done, and the other is not done - I know there is a trick to this, and I know that YOU WILL KNOW - BECAUSE YOU ARE THE GODDESSSSS
Uh oh. I don't think I know any trick for this! My best guess would be to flip em before they cook and shrink too much. Shrinking will make them loose around the centre where the stick goes through. Also, if your ingredients are touching (but not packed tight ... cause you need air flow around all the individiual keblob ingredients) this will help make turning them easier. And make sure the kebabs aren't stuck to the BBQ or baking sheet. This'll do you in for sure if you try to turn them. Helpful? Hope so.
I know a trick for this!! ..aka my dad figured it out and I had to hunt them down.
He used flat kebab sticks! Yes, they look like little arrows stamped out of sheet metal. And I had the honour of searching the local middle eastern store to find them. Oh, and there won't be a price sticker on them, so unless you're fluent in Arabic be ready to haggle in broken English.
And you can clean them and reuse them! Just be careful not to burn yourself when you turn them (use tongs or oven mitts or other people).
Emily! You're absolutely right! I forgot about those fancy metal skewers! You can get quite elaborate ones. Must be on the look out. Salaam Alaikum.
Instead of getting special sticks, you could always just stick a toothpick crossing the skewer perpendicularly (remove it later) into the pieces that can kill you if not cooked properly. Why buy fancy skewers when you can ram a stick through it? ;)
Red peppers and red onions both make me want to vomit, yet the final picture looks delicious... I think you may just be magical.
So ..... you might wanna go with a different vegetable selection then. :)
Try mushrooms, chunks of zucchini or yellow summer squash, asparagus and/or cherry tomatoes. I'm not actually a fan of onions and peppers in this for either... :-)
They sure look pretty! I have actually never tried making kabobs. Now I may have to. We are smoking chicken today. Yummm.
Ugh. So hungry.