Cooking Tips: Skewers

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Summertime means lots of meals cooked over the grill. And with the variety of fresh vegetables available right now, almost everything can be cooked over the grill. Skewers can help you stabilize cut up vegetables and meats so they don't fall through the grates of your grill. Use two skewers instead of one to stabilize the food even more. For metal skewers, check out twisted or square skewers to help keep your food in place and prevent slipping. If you prefer wooden skewers, keep the foods closer together so there's no space between them. You'll also want to soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes before threading on the food to keep the skewers from catching fire on the grill. And to keep from over-cooking one food and under cooking another, put foods with similar cook times on the same skewer.

Tip of the Week: Grilling with Skewers

As grilling season starts to heat up, we thought we'd toss out a few ideas for grilling with skewers.  

 

• Soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes before using them so they won't burn during cooking.
• If you prefer metal skewers, which have a long life, use square or twisted types, which will hold the food better than round ones.
• To keep food from slipping off during cooking and turning, use two parallel skewers rather than a single skewer.
• If you're using a wooden skewer, as you thread the food move the pieces close together, with no space showing.
• If the skewer is metal, you can leave small spaces between the pieces.
• When using foods with different cooking times (such as shrimp and beef), don't combine them on the same skewer. Instead, make skewers of just shrimp or just beef, start cooking the beef first, and then combine them on a serving platter.
• Cut meats and veggies to the same size. One- to 1½-inch inch cubes work well.
• Group foods with similar cooking times together. While a skewer of bell peppers, cherry tomatoes and chicken looks appetizing, those tomatoes may turn to mush--or worse, slither off the skewer--by the time the chicken is done.
• To stabilize round or hard-to-skewer foods like tomatoes and shrimp, use two skewers parallel to each other.