Review: Dutch West Indian Chicken Kebobs, May 2001

[Beth H]

Received the May 2001 issue yesterday and was excited to try these. I was disappointed in several ways. First, the recipe suggests grilling these chicken skewers "two minutes a side" -- which I would interpret as four minutes. I left them on the grill for about 7 minutes. Some were done, but others were nearly raw, especially where they were sort of "doubled" on each other in the skewer -- maybe I didn't skewer them right. So, I ended up throwing half of them away -- and was grossed out by almost eating raw chicken. I also wasn't crazy about the marinade -- I thought the taste was really overpowered by the cumin -- if I were to try these again, I would reduce the cumin by at least half and increase the molasses and thai chili paste.

I like the idea of chicken skewers, though --I do kebobs quite often with success. Any tips on how long you grill yours? And, maybe the skewered chicken needs to be "flatter"?

[judyf]

Beth,
Try putting fewer pieces of chicken on each kebob. It sounds like the chicken was to close together. I know what you mean by being "grossed out" from eating semi raw chicken. Several years ago , I had clams on a skewer and they ended up being raw ( I guess the waiter picked up the wrong skewers) and it took me several years to eat clams again.

[aggie94]

I'm so sad to hear that you didn't have a good experience with these, since we really loved them! I had about a pound and a half of chicken, and ended up with 13 skewers. (Each skewer had what I would consider two chicken-tender sized pieces). DH is in charge of the grill, so I don't know exactly how long they were on. But he threw them all on together, and says it was a couple of minutes on each side over the flame (we have a charcoal grill), and then a couple more minutes off the flame, on the edge of the grill rack. They were plenty done. And we didn't think the cumin was that strong either -- DH doesn't like cumin, so he wouldn't have liked the kebabs had the cumin flavor been overpowering.

Did you at least like the peanut sauce?

[Beth H]

Well, I didn't do the peanut sauce (which sounded good), as my husband isn't big on sauces, and it seemed like a lot of trouble for just me. I think I'll try doing skewers again, just maybe adjusting the marinade without cumin and grilling them a few extra minutes.