Baked Kabobs - Sirloin Tip, Chicken, and Mushroom

BLOT: (27 Dec 2010 - 12:45:15 PM)

Baked Kabobs - Sirloin Tip, Chicken, and Mushroom

On Christmas, I wanted to cook something a little different than your average turkey + ham + roast beef kind of dish, and at some point in time, the idea of kabobs stuck in my head (no pun intended). I had the skewers and the desire and, a quick trip to the nearby corner grocer, later: I had the supplies. At the core of the dilemma was the fact that my smallish indoor grill would not be able to cook kabobs for four people at the same time, and we've had issues with it cooking beef well before it cooked chicken in the past. I needed something that could cook all of the kabobs and I needed to be able to cook all of the kabob ingredients evenly. I decided to bake them.

Some quick research online found few simple and real baked kabob recipes. Which is to say you can find lots of recipes if you are looking to involve a culinary degree, pinapple, and chilli peppers sun roasted on the first day of spring. What about the basics of baking as opposed to grilling a kabob? I decided to guess. For Christmas dinner. That's right, I'm braver than you.

This is what I did, about 1.5 pounds of sirloin tips. About 1 pound of chicken. About two cups of mushrooms, long sliced. I pre-boiled the chicken in brine until it was partially, but not totally done. In the future, I will skip this step and that was me being a worry wort. Then I marinated the meat and mushroom in a sauce that was made up soy and a hoppish beer with pinches of dill mixed in along with some pepper. After thirty minutes, I filled up the skewers, sprinked some chilli powder and some garlic powder on top, and baked. The temp was 375 and I baked them for about 15-20 minutes. I know I am being really inprecise here because I am not trying to lay down a set recipe, mostly just trying to say that it can be done. And here are the things I've learned.

You do not have to soak the skewers over night, or say a prayer to Polynesian volcano god, to stop the skewers from catching fire and burning down the house. There was no issue with the skewers scorching or anything of the sort.

The meat will come out a little dry, this way, so you want to baste it and turn it at least one time. A lot of the juices will get caught in the pan and that will help, but still needs a bit of moisture. Not a lot.

You will still get a bit of the "uneven" cooking. A lot better than our grill handles it, but some of the beef (none of the chicken) was variably done, from well-done to medium-well. It was slight, and I liked the effect, but again something of a mid-turn should help this.

That is it. This was mostly just to say: you can bake kabobs and this doesn't have to involve beds of things or specialty knives or blue moons.

LABEL(s): Food

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 52
BY MONTH: December 2010