My First Kebabs on the Egg

jfm0830

One thing I have looked forward to every summer for the last 6 or 7 years is the release of the Cook’s Illustrated Summer Grilling Guide 20XX. This recipe called: Great Grilled Beef Kebabs was my first cook from this cookbook as well as my first kebabs on the egg. The impatient among you can scroll down to the photos, but I am going to take the opportunity to ask how folks here would handle these kebabs on a Large BGE. 

The recipe called for the kebabs to be grilled using separate skewers for the veggies and meat, which was nothing new to me. What was new was the way they suggested grilling them. The beef kebabs were direct grilled using high heat and the veggies were grilled using high indirect heat. Multizone fires, let alone direct indirect cooks aren’t easily done on a stock BGE.These kebabs only used 2 12” skewers for the meat and 2 for the veggies. I was able to use my half moon raised grid with the drip pan to do these but I am wondering if there is a better solution. Another issue is my current flat bar skewers, which I love, are 14” meaning I can only use about 4 of them at a time. But what would you folks do if you were faced with cooking kebabs direct and indirect at the same time and using two LBGE are an option.

• Use the half moon raised grill grate like I did.
• Instead of a two-zone fire, use a two Egg fire. One large for direct, one for indirect. 
• Some third party solution and if so which?

These kebabs were excellent but there was some room for improvement which I will cover after the pictures. OK on to the pictures.

The marinade used: Tomato paste, chopped fresh rosemary, diced onion, lemon zest, vegetable oil, beef broth, salt, sugar, pepper & finely diced garlic.

The finished marinade after being pureed using an immersion blender.

The recipe called for 2" beef sirloin tip cubes. My butcher cut two strip of beef sirloin for me so I could get as close to 2" x 2" as possible, but the cuts they were working from just weren't that thick. After the meat was cubed it was placed in a Ziploc 1 gallon freezer bag with the marinade. Then it was off to the fridge for at least an hour.

Some of the marinade was reserved for the veggies: Sweet onion, zucchini & red bell pepper.

 

The veggies are cut to size &  are coated with the marinade. I used toothpicks temporarily to hold the onion wedges together.

The beef cubes marinaded for 90 minutes & I feel I probably should have done a better job here patting the meat dry. I think some of the charring I got on the first side was from the marinade burning from the high heat.

The beef & veggies are skewered.

Everything is out at the Egg which has been set up with the half moon raised grid & is stabilized at 525 degrees.

The meat is direct grilling on the cast iron grill grate installed wide bar side facing up. The veggies are on the half moon raised grid for indirect. Wrapping the drip pan with foil makes cleanup easier.

The beef kebabs are done and will be pulled & rested for 5 minutes tented in foil while the veggies cooked for the additional 5 minutes.

The veggies are done after the addition 5 minutes. BTW this was a called for in the recipe and the time was just about right.

Time to eat! I also served up Southwestern Style fried rice.

Some German hefeweizen (wheat beer) completed this day's bill of fare.

The good news was these kebabs were excellent. The meat was the best tasting beef kebab meat I’ve made. I think part of this was due to the marinade which was said to help bring out the beefy flavor. I also think that charcoal grilling these came into play too. These kebabs actually had a tiny pink smoke ring. You will have to take my word for it, because my camera battery crapped out when I went to snap that picture. But there are some areas where I could improve things:

-The first side of the meat charred more than I might have liked. I did reduce the cooking time from 4 minutes per side to 3 minutes. This was the range given in the recipe. I also think part of this may have been my not wiping off enough of the marinade before skewering the kebabs.

• The veggies were just about right, I am going to try giving them a minute or two more.
• I will probably need to replace my favorite skewers because I can only get about 4 on the LBGE at a time.

Since my wife declared these to be the best kebabs I have ever made, so I WILL be making them again with a few tweaks.

Jim

TexanOfTheNorth

I don't see anything wrong with your setup! The results speak for themselves!

Chubbs

Looks great Jim. The char may have come from the CI grate. Most recipes I see don't specify a CI grate and as you know the hotter and wider surface area of the grates could have been the culprit. Looks damn good from here though. Nice cook

jfm0830

Thank you guys!!

@Chubbs - Great point, I never even thought of that but you could be totally right. Gee now it looks like I might have to do up several test batches before I get to the bottom of this. 

It's a tough job but someone's gotta do it. Thanks for the suggestion.

Jim

bbqlearner

Great looking food right there! =D> Btw, I've been looking for those type of skewers. Mind sharin where you get it?

Richard Fl

Great looking meal.  I have several different lengths and styles of skewers and my next batch will be these without handles.  24 1/2 "  x 15/16". 

http://www.sadaf.com/sadaf-bbq-skewer-wide-no-handles-90-7660/

 

 I have some that are 24 1/2 x 9/16 with wood handles and the wood is about 1-2" inside my large.  Without the wood handle the dome will close better and the  wood handles will eventually burn off,  

Richard Fl

bbqlearner said:

Great looking food right there! =D> Btw, I've been looking for those type of skewers. Mind sharin where you get it?

 

see my post ref skewers.  His look like Steve Reichlen

Griffin

Another great looking cook @jfm0830. You never cease to amaze me. Besides firing up both your eggs, one direct and one indirect, I really don't have any ideas other than what you did. If it was me, I would have used the recipe as a guide and grilled both the meat and veggies direct and adjusted the times on the veggies.

jfm0830

Thanks for again for the comments.

bbqlearner said:.... Btw, I've been looking for those type of skewers. Mind sharin where you get it?

Not at all. @Richard_FL got it right, they are Steven Raichlen skewers. I really love them, but I may need to move to something else because they are 17"  long and you can't fit too many of these on the 18" dia. grate on my LBGE. So depending on the size of your Egg you might want to find something similar, but shorter. 

@Griffin I have this obsession with trying a recipe the way it was written and then tweak things the next time if needed. So I "had" to try it that way and what I tried did work. .Yesterday it seemed silly to put 2 skewers each on two Eggs, so I used the half moon raised grid. I've used it about a dozen times now and it does seem to do indirect very well, but it sure doesn't hold much food. I do have to figure out something for when I do larger batches of kebabs. Sadly I think I can only get about 5 of the SR skewers on one grate at a time.

shtgunal3

Those look great jfm!

Richard Fl

Skewer follow up.  With the 24" flat skewers with no handle, they fit on all BGEs eggcept the XLRG. They actually rest on the gasket if you have one and the lid closes just fine. 

travisstrick

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

 The bar has been set. 

finster

Jim, can you tell me what else you've done with your Half moon, veggies only?

jfm0830

Here are links to two other things I have done with the the half-moon raised grill grid, one posted here one posted only on my web site:

Cowboy Rib-eye (you will need to go to the first page of this I can't get this link to do that)

Pork T-Bones Steaks

Both turned out well.

Here is a blog entry I wrote about using the h-mrgg.:

Raised Grid

Jim

thetrim

Awesome, awesome, awesome

Bjorg

Looks very good. Can you share the marinade recipe quantities?

jfm0830

Bjorg said:

Looks very good. Can you share the marinade recipe quantities?

Sorry, I don't share recipes if the recipe author's don't freely post them on the Internet. Having said that, the Cooks Illustrated Summer Grilling Guide 2013 Is still on the newsstands around here. You should be able to get what you need at your local newsstand.

ReldtiCDN

mountaindewbass said:

I found this today at Lowes for $8. I was actually on the hunt for the weber fish basket for asparagus(idea came from jfm blog)

Just got one for fathers day. One thing when you press the hole in the patty it is difficult to remove the hole presser with the grease on it, you will need a towel.
SORRY for going off topic.