Your BBQ, grilling, and outdoor cooking missions will eventually bring you to one of life’s simple joys: meat on a stick.
While the traditional wooden or bamboo skewers offer a chance to eat right off the stick, which is always a treat, they also require soaking for at least 30 minutes in advance and can still burn or splinter on a hot fire.
If you like to serve your meat and vegetable skewers on the stick, I suggest cooking them first on stainless steel metal skewers and then piercing the meat again (in the opposite direction) with a wooden or bamboo skewer for serving.
Making the transition to stainless steel skewers has quite a few benefits, while wooden and bamboo skewers have some essential flaws.
Find the Right Skewers
Morole 33PCS Grilling Metal Skewers
This 33-piece set includes eight 16-inch wooden handle skewers, eight 16-inch thread skewers, eight 14-inch straight skewer, eight corn forks, and a storage bag.
Finding the right skewer for your grilling mission is key; skewers come in a variety of lengths and shapes, including straight and flexible skewers with handle embellishments and smart features. If you’re using a grill with a lid, make sure you choose a skewer length that will allow you to close the grill lid.
Metal skewers now come in flat, round, spiral, or square shapes, and some also have double shafts. A square or spiral shape is especially helpful in keeping foods from sliding off the skewer or spinning around the shaft as you turn them on the grill. If you’re already working with spinning skewers (round metal or wooden), you can try using tongs to cradle the foods as you turn them and keep things grilling evenly.
Wooden Skewers
Image Credit: Rachel Claire via Pexels
Wooden skewers, even when soaked, have a hard time handling the heat since they are not flexible grilling skewers. Any high-temp grilling items will do better with a metal alternative.
If for some reason you have to use wooden or bamboo, choose a thicker skewer. In a jam, you can cover the ends of wooden skewers in foil to form a makeshift handle. You can also use this trick with the foil to raise metal or wooden skewers off of the grill grates when you are cooking foods that are likely to stick.
Metal Skewers
Image Credits: Markus Spiske on Unsplash
While metal skewers are more expensive at the start, they are reusable and will save you money in the long run.
Keep in mind that meats and vegetables require different cooking times. Make a whole metal skewer of one food type and you can re-pierce them on bamboo later, resulting in no burned veggies or undercooked meats.
If service and plating aren’t important for your meal, a nice plate piled high with a lot of colors and different foods looks just as delicious to me. You can also partially cook vegetables in advance to even out the time of all your skewered foods on the grill.
Don’t forget that since metal skewers retain heat, they cook foods from the inside as the grill does its outside work. Also, read product description before making a purchase decision!
Metal Skewer Tips and Tricks
Image credits: Christo Anestev via Pixabay
Remember, spacing matters! On bamboo or wooden skewers, squeezing the food together can help keep the stick from burning, but might result in undercooked foods. On a metal skewer, you can space your meats for even cooking, or place them closer together if you like to keep things on the rare/medium-rare side.
Since the wooden skewers are rough, food is also more likely to stick. That can be great for keeping food where it belongs unless you’re cooking juicy meats. Prepping wooden skewers with oil can help, but that’s just one more step before you get your food to the grill. Metal skewers have cut out these soaking and oiling steps, and they are less likely to trouble you with food that sticks.
There are new high-end, forged stainless steel options from sellers that include the feature of a sliding disk to help with quick removal. If you opt for this, just remember: metal is hot! Use tongs to slide the disc down, and you’ll have all the food off the skewer cleanly, quickly, and on your plate where it belongs.
To Wrap Up
Grilling food using skewers is a great way to take your barbecue to the next level. However, as always there is a choice to make. In this case, the choice is mainly between choosing the wooden or metal skewers. The wooden skewers are less expensive, but they won't allow you to prepare such tasty food as with metal ones. Try both options and decide which one you prefer, and of course, enjoy your food!