Food: Broiled Kabobs

We weren't really in the mood to do a lot of cooking or go out over the weekend, so we turned to a quick and easy yet tasty dinner---shish kabobs.  We use a recipe found here.  It's essentially a rosemary balsamic steak marinade and a citrus thyme marinade for the chicken (thyme being an easy substitute for tarragon).  The nice thing is that the marinades are extremely easy to make.  You can then cube your meat, pour the marinade over them, and stick them in the fridge overnight.

Kabobs are made to be grilled, but unfortunately it was storming outside most of the weekend.  As a result, I didn't think it would be wise to stand outside next to a large metal object, let alone one that was connected to a large flammable propane source.  So instead we turned to the forgotten, unsung hero of the kitchen---the broiler.  Broilers are essentially inverted grills, having the intense heat source radiating above the food.  Ours consists of a gas burner mounted on the top of our oven.  On the one hand, it's generally not as powerful as a grill, but on the other hand your oven is generally more insulated than a grill so it can retain more heat.  We placed the kabobs on a wire rack to let the juices drip down and broiled them.  We were pretty pleased with the results---we were still able to get some nice charring of the meat and caramelization of the cherry tomatoes.  The whole procedure took less than half an hour.  And it was delicious.

Chicken kabobs

 

Steak and mushroom kabobs