This past weekend a friend who I haven’t seen in almost 10 years and her family came over for a dinner cookout. Since I know my friend reads this blog, I had to impress her with my mad culinary skills (!) but since it was a Saturday, I also had 26 things to do during the day with my family, which didn’t leave much time for cooking. Of course, it had to be something that a bunch of children would like, but burgers and dogs seemed too ordinary for such an occasion. Solution: marinated chicken kebabs!
Most recipes for marinated grilled meat call for marinating at least overnight. This clearly wasn’t going to work for me because I didn’t even make it to the grocery store until the morning of the cookout. Instead of marinating whole pieces of meat, I cut up the chicken into kebab sized cubes and marinated it for about 6 hours in the fridge. Skip the bottles of marinade from the store – it is almost as easy to make your own at home and it will taste a million times fresher and will have less sodium and no preservatives. Some lemon juice, olive oil and snipped herbs grown in pots on my deck – voila! To round out the menu I kept with the food-on-a-stick theme and made some veggie kebabs, coconut rice and guacamole and store-bought chips.
My kids loved these kebabs so much that they raided the fridge later in the evening and ate the leftover chicken. “Mom, these are so good I wish we could have them every night!” It is so easy to make the marinade ahead of time and they grill so quickly, there is no reason not to make these during the week as well.
