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(THEME MUSIC)
Now, cooks have been grilling things on a stick for centuries.
It doesn't matter if you're from the Middle East and it's called a kebab
or from Thailand and it's called a satay
or if you're from France and it's called a brochette,
we all have a different way of getting whatever it is
that we're getting onto that stick,
but once it's on, you put it over a little bit of flame
and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
So I'm going to show you a few tricks and a few different ways of doing it.
Over here, I've got some big wooden skewers.
I'm going to show you how, first of all, to do a vegie skewer.
I've got some eggplant and some capsicum,
a couple of different colours of that,
I've got a little bit of zucchini.
Now the problem with this little skewer here
is there's no sort of surface
that it actually comes into contact with the flame everywhere
and you see they're all cut slightly different sizes.
So what I'm going to do is just trim it up just like that.
So then it will actually sit on the barbecue.
OK, so trim it up that way, trim it up that way
and trim it up this way.
So you're just trimming off just a little bit of the vegetables
but you're actually going to get
a really nice even cooking on the vegies now.
Alright? So a little bit of salt and pepper.
And then a drizzle of olive oil.
So I'm going to put that guy on.
Like so.
Now, of course the skewers can come like this.
They can be these stainless steel guys. Like that.
You can find little flat ones that aren't going to spin around.
So they're a good one to do if you're going to form meat around it.
Of course, rosemary.
You can just take off that last little bit of herb
and you've got a beautiful homemade skewer.
Nice, big, long ones if you want to do a really big one.
You can just go ahead and thread that through.
So you see how I'm sort of just zigzagging it all the way through.
And that way, you can get a nice, even cook
'cause it actually is quite flat.
Right? So that straight onto your grill.
The great thing about stainless steel skewers
is you don't have to worry about them burning.
Now, the wooden ones, and I hear this a lot from people,
people have trouble with them burning.
So what I've done is soaked it in a little water.
So that water's gonna get into the wood
and it's gonna take longer for it to dry out before it starts to burn.
So it's not foolproof, but it is a good help.
I've flavoured my chicken here with the flavours of a Thai larb.
Because this is a flat skewer
and I'm gonna actually mould some meat around this one,
squeeze it on nice and tight.
OK, and then a little bit of olive oil.
And then that goes straight onto the grill.
Of course you can use the rosemary if you like the flavour of rosemary.
And you smell that. It's got this beautiful scent.
So it's a great way to get flavour
into whatever it is that you're cooking.
I've got some beef here which I've marinaded and diced up
so you can just go ahead, thread that through.
Now, of course, you're probably looking at this big bushy part
of the rosemary here, thinking,
"But won't that burn when he puts it onto the grill?"
The truth is it quite possibly could.
So one way to get around that is get a little piece of foil
and I have some just here.
Little piece of foil like that.
And just go ahead and put that down at the end of the barbecue.
You can even double it up.
And that's going to stop the skewer from actually burning.
So I've got a little rosemary one there
which is a bit more delicate, of course.
So we go ahead, place that on the foil
and then that way, you're still getting the meat to the hotter part
of the barbecue, you know, up towards the back there.
Next, I'm going to use a stainless steel skewer
and through some of this chicken that I've marinaded,
I'm literally just going to pierce that all the way through.
So you're not going see the skewer from the outside
'cause it just goes straight on through just like that.
A good secret to making beautiful skewers is not to overload them.
Don't put huge chunks of meat on them.
You'll see I've cut my meat quite small
and they look kind of delicate, the skewers, and it's on purpose.
I also don't put too many vegetables and meat
unless they're the same cooking length.
Because if you put a piece of mushroom and a piece of steak
and one takes one minute and one takes three minutes,
then something's gonna end up overcooked.
There's a million different things that you can do with a skewer
on a barbecue, but remember -
soak your skewers if they're wooden in water beforehand,
put that little piece of foil down there so it's not going to burn,
trim up your vegies so they cook nice and evenly
and I guarantee that your skewers will come off the barbie
in much better shape than they have done in the past.
Good luck.
(THEME MUSIC)
PEOPLE: Ta-da!