Like a bright and cheerful summer afternoon, these Grilled Chicken Skewers with Veggies are a quick and easy dinner for the next time you go camping.
When the sun is out and the days are long, it’s easy to lose track of the day. One moment you’re relaxing in a hammock, drinking a cold one and minding your own business. And the next, you’re being told it’s 6:45 pm, everyone’s hungry, and what’s the plan for dinner, anyway? It’s times like these when having a low-effort meal standing by would be real, real nice.
This is exactly the type of scenario where Present You will really thank Past You for prepping these veggie and chicken skewers the day before. It wasn’t even that difficult! All it took was chopping up some veggies, slicing a few chicken thighs, and tossing everything into a resealable container or bag with the marinade.
Now Present You just has to retrieve the marinated chicken from the cooler, skewer up the ingredients, and toss them on the grill grate of the campfire. With some deft delegation skills, you might even get a few more minutes back in the hammock before it’s time to eat.
So on those lazy days of summer, when the most pressing item on the day’s agenda is to keep things mellow, making these veggie chicken kebabs ahead of time can pay out big dividends.
How To Make Grilled Chicken Skewers
First things first, make the marinade. We like a simple, herb-forward marinade using fresh parsley and basil, fresh lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and salt. You can play around with the ingredients if you like, adding other citrus like orange and lime, or swapping out the herbs with things like rosemary, cilantro, or oregano depending on the vibe you’re aiming for.
You can make the marinade at home before your trip: in that case, store it in a sealed container until the day you’re going to grill the chicken (marinating the chicken too long in lemon juice can make the texture a bit mushy).
Up to two hours (and at least 30 minutes) before you want to grill, chop up the chicken into bite-sized pieces and add it to the marinade. In the meantime, you can get your campfire going so you’ll have embers to grill over.
Once the chicken has had a chance to pick up all that great flavor, thread them onto skewers along with your vegetables. Our favorite veggies for grilled kabobs are mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, any kind of onion, zucchini, yellow squash, and bell peppers. In this case, we went with mushrooms, tomatoes, and green onions, but feel free to get creative!
Pro Tip: While it looks pretty in photos (guilty as charged!), putting all your different veggies and chicken on the same skewer means everything cooks imperfectly. By the time your chicken is done, something else would have burned. Keep like ingredients on the same skewers and pull them off as things are properly cooked.
Grill the skewers over medium-high to high heat, turning occasionally so they cook evenly until the chicken and veggies are cooked through – about 10 minutes total.
Essential Equipment
- Flat metal skewers: flat skewers will allow you to turn the kabobs for even cooking without the annoyance of the ingredients spinning around.
- Chimney starter: a collapsible portable chimney can get your coal going in minutes without the use of noxious smelling lighter fluid.
- Heat-resistant gloves: the metal skewers will be hot when you go to pull them off the campfire, so we recommend using a pair of heat resistant gloves (or a pair of metal tongs).
Source: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/grilled-chicken-veggie-skewers/