My brother made skewers last weekend on the outdoor gas grill, with a combo of chicken, pineapple chunks, mushrooms, red bell peppers, and red onion wedges. He made mine without the peppers and onions, by request, so tonight I tried to make my own chicken and mushroom skewers with grilled pineapple as the side.
I started with this new fancy marinade that came in one of the many gift baskets we've gotten lately: garlic rosemary citrus sauce. It was pretty good stuff. I cubed 2 big organic chicken breasts and used a whole small package of mushrooms. I let it all marinade covered in the fridge for about 2 hours.
My Giant only had little skewers, maybe about 6 inches, instead of the big (maybe 10 inch?) ones my brother had. So I made 6 little mini skewers.
Here it all is on my nice Calphalon grill pan. And you can see the problem - unlike on the grill, on the pan the marinade has nowhere to go but to start burning. I kept turning the skewers and the burning didn't end up to be too bad - the chicken and mushrooms still had good flavor. But I would love to figure out how to grill marinaded things in the pan without this problem. So far I've only stuck to seasoned meats, nothing with a liquid marinade. Any advice?
It all came out pretty well, and it was a light, tasty dinner. Grilled pineapple freakin' rocks. I have 3 more skewers for lunch tomorrow, though they were the ones that were a little more burned.
I talked with Mom after dinner and she recommended next time I let the skewers sit over the bowl for a while to let most of the liquid marinade drip off, so it's still got the flavor but less of the mess. Does anyone have any other tricks?
2 comments:
Grill pans do have a tendency to burn liquid marinades. two things. The amount of sugar/corn syrup in the marinade...sugar burns really easily...try making your own marinade without excess sugar/honey/etc. Second, feel free to turn the heat down. I used to use my grill pan on high heat...everything burned and didn't cook thru...eventually I used my smarty pants and turned the heat down...things were better.
Good advice Scott. One trick I use is to turn the grilled pan WAY hot to start and then after a minute turn it down to medium. That way you get the grilled marks and the smoky flavor but you can cook the meat through.
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