I love the taste of kabobs whether they have lamb, beef, chicken or shellfish. But the last thing I want to do at night after a long day at work is to come home and have to worry about skewering everything. Of course, I could do it the night before, but again, it’s too much effort on a weeknight.
So what can you do if you love that melding of veggies, but don’t want all the work of kabobbing them?
You can make your kabobs in the skillet sans skewering!
Ingredients
- Protein of your choice (or no protein for that matter)
- One Red Pepper
- One Onion
- One small zucchini aka green squash
- One small yellow squash
- 8 or so small to medium mushrooms
- One large tomato
- 1/8 cup sherry/balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 cup tomato sauce/juice/ketchup
Directions
Place a little olive oil in your skillet, preferably a large cast iron one. It’ll hold the heat better and will also give you some dietary iron for your system.
Put the skillet on high heat and get it nice and warm. While you are doing that, wash and slice the mushrooms. Place them in the skillet to cook first on high heat. Mushrooms have a lot of water and you want to evaporate all that water and get the mushrooms starting to brown before you add any other veggies, otherwise you will just be steaming them and not pan broiling them.
Next, cut the red pepper into inch cubes. Add to mushrooms once all the water is gone. Set the heat to medium-high.
Cut the onions into one inch cubes. Once the red peppers are starting to sweat a little, add the onions. Give everything a good stir every now and then.
Prep a second pan with a little oil for your protein or if you have a grill handy, get that warming up.
On a different cutting board, slice your beef/lamb/pork/chicken into thin slices for faster cooking. If you’re using shrimp or scallops there is no need to do anything with them other than cook them.
Chop the yellow and green squash in half and then slice into uniform slices. About 1/4 inch thick since we want it to cook fairly fast. Once the onions are starting to look translucent, toss in the squash.
In the second pan, place your slices of meat or shellfish. Leave them on one side until they are starting to brown and then turn. Keep an eye on the veggies and give them a stir or two.
While the meat/fish is cooking, slice the tomato into eighths and then cut those eighths in half. You want to toss the tomato in at that very last minute. You can also substitute grape or cherry tomatoes, but not very big ones.
Once all the meat is cooked, place it on a plate and let it rest for a second. You are going to slice it into strips and then mix it in with the veggies. Once it is all mixed, add the sherry/balsamic vinegar (not apple vinegar as it is too strong) to the veggie/meat mix and stir. Then add the tomato sauce/juice/ketchup. Not too much. Give it a stir and cook for just a few minutes.
That’s it. Skillet kabobs! Serve them over rice, couscous or rice pilaf.
Hope you enjoyed this Tuesday’s Tip!
When I was researching 
I got tired of the same old same old that we’d been eating and decided to try something different last Saturday — Pulled Pork. I have a dry rub recipe that I use on my ribs and brisket and slathered that on some pork loins, slipped them into the oven to cook for some time and then pulled apart that tender pork and added some more rub and KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce (the tastiest so far in my book).