(bright music) - [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

Today, it's a beautiful day, it's a pool day, getting ready for the kids to come out so they can get in here and get wet in just a minute.

Today with a Venus this nice, I think we're gonna do a little bit of grilling.

I've got a wonderful kabob recipe that I think we're gonna try out.

Maybe serve that over some couscous.

It's gonna be really great.

So why don't you guys stay tuned?

Thank you very much.

(upbeat music continues) Hi, it's "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

I'm your host, Tim.

We're back, we're actually out on Dapper Dad's patio.

We're gonna do a little bit of grilling today.

We're gonna do some skewers.

These are gonna be great because we're gonna have them set up ahead of time and we'll bring them out when the charcoal gets ready.

Got a little tumbleweed under there to go ahead and get the fire started.

Gonna use my orange bucket with some lump charcoal.

And then we'll go ahead and get this lit.

All right.

Now when the charcoal gets set, we'll go ahead and put it in the tray.

But while we're waiting for that to go ahead and fire up, let's get our kabobs put together.

(logo whooshing) Okay, we've got the grill rolling, at least heating up and getting there.

So we're getting that lit and we're gonna come inside and we're gonna go ahead and get our skewers made.

Really fun recipe today.

Shrimp and sausage skewers with a herb lemon marinade.

These are gonna be great.

We're gonna serve them with some Israeli couscous, and I think it's gonna be a wonderful dish.

But let's go ahead and get started.

Once again, we're gonna focus on our knife cuts on this one.

Kind of wanna make everything similar size, number one, so it looks good, but also so it grills evenly.

So I'm gonna start off with the sausage here.

Go ahead and cut it in half.

Make it a little more manageable on the cutting board.

And then we're gonna go ahead and cut them about just a little bit more than, you know, maybe close to half an inch thick.

I'm gonna go ahead and put these in my bowl over here as they get cut.

Skewers are fun because, I don't know, it just kind of screams summertime to me.

You can always get these on the grill.

They're very light.

The other thing I love about them, the possibilities are endless as far as what you wanna make your skewers out of.

Chicken, shrimp, beef, sausage, vegetables.

I've seen tofu skewers before.

You can do just about anything you want with that.

And as far as your marinade goes, whatever your favorite is, make it spicy, make it simple, make it herb.

But I think the herb lemon is gonna taste really good.

It's gonna be really refreshing on a hot summer day like today.

Now that we got those in there, we got our shrimp separately over here.

We're gonna go ahead and start with some of the vegetables right here.

Bell peppers, very easy, adds a lot of color, adds a little bit of crisp as well.

What I like to do is I like to just go ahead and cut out the center, make it easy, pull that out with the seeds, make sure you get all of the membrane out of there.

And then just go ahead and cut it in half and cut it in the size that you want.

For these, we're gonna go with about one inch sizes.

So I'm gonna go ahead, cut out the membrane.

And that's the little white part that the seeds were attached to.

The reason I cut that out is it's not that it has a bad flavor or anything, it does, it's very spongy.

It will light up pretty quick once over an open flame or open charcoal and it will go ahead and kind of just burn and you don't want that flavor being added onto your kabobs.

Once again, go ahead and cut these.

Try to make them in as equal portions as you can.

And like I said, I'm gonna go for about just a little bit over an inch there.

(upbeat music) We'll go ahead and we'll put these all in our bowl.

And I've also got some green just to kind of make it, give it a color pop.

So thinking of things that are in summertime, once again, like I said earlier, these are great to prepare ahead.

You gotta let it marinade for a little bit so you can have it in the fridge, you can have it ready to go.

And then whenever you're ready, go ahead and get your grill out so it's not something that you've gotta kind of like labor over in order to get dinner going.

You can prepare these the morning before or even the night before.

(upbeat music) Do the same thing here.

Make sure they're nice and clean.

All right, so got these, we also got some red onion.

I don't think that any kabob is complete without having some red onion in there.

So we'll go ahead and get that cleaned up.

The thing I've typically learned with this one, it's gonna be very simple because the sausage technically is already cooked.

We're just gonna be heating it up.

It's just a polish sausage, kind of like a kielbasa, a smoked sausage if you will.

And the shrimp, shrimp do not take very long at all to cook.

When doing kabobs in the summertime, some of the things that I like to do is it does look very pretty when you have a kabob with your vegetables and your mushrooms and your chicken and your steak all in one kabob.

But honestly, all of those things cook at different temperatures and different times.

So if I'm making a whole bunch of kabobs for a party, I'm gonna go ahead and make veggie kabobs, I'm gonna make chicken kabobs, I'm gonna make steak kabobs, and then I'm gonna put them out on a plate, and everybody can grab what they want and put it on their plate.

And that way you're also being a little safer about it.

You know that your beef, you might not want your beef well done, but you do definitely want your chicken to be cooked all the way through.

When it comes to putting onions on kabobs, I try to keep them in larger chunks.

So we're just gonna cut it in quarters, and then again, we'll set those to the side.

So I cut it in half, into a quarter, and then I quarter that quarter, we'll put those aside.

These will kind of take apart and we want to leave them in chunks so that way they're fun and easy to put on the skewer and they kind of stick together.

Although we're gonna put a marinade and everything, we're not gonna put the marinade on these because I want to keep them together like that.

It's just gonna make things easier.

All right, I'm gonna set this aside for just a moment, and then we're gonna go ahead and work on our marinade.

So got a couple of lemons.

We're gonna go ahead and get these.

I still need the cutting board.

Sorry about that.

Back over.

We're gonna go ahead and roll them, loosen them up so that way they're gonna be a lot easier to juice.

So yep, I can feel that, these are very.

If you have a lemon juicer, that works good too, but I don't, so I'm just gonna do it the old fashioned way and hope that we don't get any seeds in there.

But we'll go ahead and squeeze it out into this bowl here.

Go ahead and do that.

I'll use the same bowl.

We'll go ahead, give the lemons a good squeeze.

And that way if you're doing the lemons first, it's easy to get the lemon seeds out of there if they fall in.

I'll just grab a spoon and pull those out.

Same thing with the other half.

So you know, thinking about what do you like to cook in the summertime, what's your favorite go-to?

I'd like to hear about it, so definitely let us know.

You can reach out to us at pbscharlotte.org, where you can find this recipe and all the other recipes from "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

Kids should like this recipe because it's got a little bit of everything in it.

It's got some shrimp, it's got some sausage, it's got the vegetables, it's all colorful.

And you kind of get to eat with your hands.

So I don't really see why my kids wouldn't enjoy this one.

All right, we've got those squeezed out, now to go ahead and start putting everything together.

What we have here, we're gonna add a little bit of olive oil, probably about a tablespoon or two.

Of course, some salt.

Sprinkle it in there, as well as some fresh ground pepper.

To that, we're gonna add a little bit of your favorite seasoning.

Where do you wanna spice it up with?

Right here, we've got a little bit of a Cajun seasoning.

Go ahead and put that in there.

So I'm just gonna grab a strainer and we're gonna go ahead and add our lemon juice, and that way we've captured all our seeds and we don't have to worry about trying to get those in there, getting those from the bottom.

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and toss this.

I'm gonna go ahead and add my shrimp.

Now this shrimp, they've been cleaned, deveined.

I leave the tail on, I like to leave the tail on.

I think it has a good look.

I mean if you want to, you can take the tail off.

It might even be better for the kids if you take the tail off.

But I'm gonna go ahead and leave it on.

It also gives you something to grab onto I like to when you're eating.

So all right, we're gonna make sure that all this is nice and coated and has had a chance to marinate in the.

To that, we're gonna go ahead and make sure that we add some of our herbs and everything.

Now what I'm gonna add to it here is a little bit of parsley.

We've got some fresh parsley and I've got some fresh dill.

So when chopping up parsley, like to go ahead and get as much of it off of the stem if you will as you can, go ahead and put that together.

(upbeat music) And we're gonna get that, and we're gonna go ahead and slice it, chop it, get it very thin.

I kind of hold it together with my fingers.

And then with rocking motion, I just kind of use the knife to chop it.

Once we're done, we're gonna chop it the other way and get it together.

Pull out some of those big pieces that I missed, make sure we get those because you don't want a bunch of big pieces of parsley in there chopped with the little pieces.

We'll go ahead and add this to our bowl.

And then I'll go ahead and add some dill to it as well.

Dill, I'm just gonna put it down.

Go ahead and do the same thing.

Chop it.

Dill's really finer, so I'm gonna be very gentle.

Don't wanna bruise it up too much, add that, we'll go for a little more.

(upbeat music continues) I like to cook, it's something new, it's something different every time, you learn new things.

And I think that by, you know, learning a lot about different recipes, you can also at the same time learn about different cultures, different people.

You know, when you're swapping out recipes with somebody, you're not just swapping, you know, a meal, you're learning a little bit about them, what they like, where they're from, what they ate growing up, and things like that.

So one of those are just some of the things that I like about, you know, just cooking in general.

We're gonna let that go ahead and marinade for about a few minutes.

We'll have plenty in there we can brush on as well afterwards.

Now we're gonna go ahead and start constructing, I almost forgot, the garlic.

We gotta put some garlic in there.

All right.

There we go.

Probably could have used a bigger bowl, but that's what we got right now.

(upbeat music) On today's show, we made a simple lemon herb marinade for our skewers.

Really simple stuff we've got around the house, olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, little bit of dill, and some parsley.

I think it's really gonna make it pop.

Now when it comes to marinades, you can make a marinade out of just about anything for just about any available protein.

And you can always marinade vegetables as well.

When it comes to marinades, it's really a three part harmony.

You've got your oil, you can use olive oil, vegetable oil, canola oil.

I like olive oil because it imparts a really nice flavor.

This is gonna help everything just come together.

It's gonna take some of the soluble fats in the meats and just bring them out as well as it's going to help keep everything from sticking to the grill.

Next up, you've got your acid, for acid, there's many different things you can use for an acid, vinegar, balsamic, white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, your citrus juices, lemon juice, lime juice, all those can be used.

And then the last part of this is the flavor, and the the world is your oyster when it comes to the flavors because you can pick anything that you want to.

Some great things are herbs, salt, pepper, your favorite spices, some fresh garlic, some peppers on there, your favorite rub, your favorite spice blend that you get at the store.

Whatever you're going for.

Let's say you're kind of going for an Italian theme, I'd stick to some basil, some oregano in your marinade there.

Asian theme, you could even use a sesame oil and kind of give that Asian flare to it.

It's really whatever you want to make about it.

There's a couple things that you really have to think about when it comes to marinating, especially with the acids.

Depending on the type of meat, it can definitely really change the texture, which is one of the purposes that it's used for in the marinade to start with.

It's a meat tenderizer.

It's there to break down some of those tough muscle fibers.

Now when it comes to beef, your tougher cuts of beef, you can let it soak for a little bit in the marinade.

You're not gonna worry about it, it's not gonna hurt anything.

But now when it comes to some of your more delicate proteins, shrimp, you don't wanna marinate those too long in a heavily acidic marinade because you're just gonna basically cook it as if it's a ceviche almost.

Even the same thing with vinegars on that.

You want to be very careful.

When it comes to chicken breast, also wanna take care because some of the acid can start to make the outside of the chicken breast kind of mushy, and it'll be really soft and kind of mushy before the inside gets fully cooked on your grill.

When it comes to chicken thighs, they're a little more forgiving, and when I'm barbecuing or smoking chicken thighs, you can marinate those overnight and all it's gonna do is just add a lot more flavor to it.

So here's your cheat sheet for marinating times.

Shrimp, delicate seafood, 20 to 30 minutes.

Chicken breasts, one to two hours.

Now unless you're gonna cube it up for kabobs, then I'd go for about a half an hour because you're exposing more of the protein surface area to the marinade.

You don't need that much time to do that.

Chicken thighs, three, four, five, six hours, maybe even overnight if you really want to.

It's not gonna hurt it, it's gonna add more flavor in there.

Pork cuts, steaks, chops, I'd say three to four hours, unless it's going to be a larger cut like a pork shoulder.

That, you can marinate overnight.

So when it comes to beef, a few hours to overnight, depending on the cut.

The easiest rule of thumb is the tougher the cut, the longer you wanna soak it in your marinade.

After your protein is fully coated in your marinade, be sure to cover it and store in the refrigerator.

So when it comes to your marinade, it doesn't matter if you're marinating chicken, seafood and shrimp, your beef steaks, your pork chops and loins, it's all about a balance, a balance of flavor and time, but too much time and the texture of your protein can really suffer, especially if it's a more delicate meat.

Not enough time, you might not even really taste all the flavor that you put your effort into on your marinade.

So get it just right and your kabobs, skewers, any other proteins that you put on the grill will always shine.

(upbeat music) Okay, we're gonna go ahead and start assembling our skewers.

Now if you're going to be using wooden skewers, you want to be sure that you go ahead and you soak them, if you're using wooden or bamboo skewers that you're going ahead and soaking them.

What I like to do is I like to use metal skewers.

You don't have to go ahead and soak them.

They are reusable, and if you're not planning on doing it, it kind of was a thought, you're ready to go.

So we'll take these and we'll go ahead and get started.

I'm gonna go ahead and start with a little bit of onion on there, and then we'll start with the shrimp.

Now one of the cool things about using shrimp on here, if you just screw the shrimp through the middle, it's gonna spin on the grill, and it's not gonna be even.

What I like to do is I like to go through the tail in the front.

Now it can still spin, but it's gonna lay flat when you cook it on the grill.

You can also, if you definitely don't want anything, you can use, I'll show you a second here, once we get our pattern going, we go sausage, we'll go green pepper, we'll put some more onion on there, we'll go yellow pepper, and then we'll go shrimp again.

We'll do it the same way.

Sausage.

Shape like that, and we'll finish off with some more onion.

We got a nice one, and right there, we've got our skewer prepared, ready for the grill.

You can also, if you'd like, you can use two skewers, skewer through everything twice.

This will prevent anything from spinning or moving once you put it on the grill.

And it's also sometimes a little bit easier to flip.

So there, flip, flip on the grill, flip it on the grill using a spatula.

I'm sorry, using tongs of course, you don't wanna use your fingers because the metal skewers will get very hot.

One of the things why I like doing these two together, even though I talked about putting your proteins as well as your vegetables separate, is that once again, the sausage is already cooked, and shrimp takes literally no time to cook over hot charcoals or open flame.

I'm using a charcoal grill.

You may have a gas grill, you could do that as well.

If you don't have a grill, you can do the same thing in a skillet.

You just wanna make sure that your skewers are short enough that they will definitely rest down in your skillet or your frying pan on your stove top.

All right, let's go ahead and make a couple more of these, and we'll follow to the same pattern.

I'll probably do, you know, these are pretty healthy skewers, and these are not your small shrimp, these are big shrimp.

They've been peeled, deveined.

I would probably count on at least one skewer per person at this point, especially when it comes to kids.

But I always like to make a couple extra in case somebody wants seconds or if I want to take some to work tomorrow.

So all right.

And it's always fun trying to stick to and remember the pattern and not mess it up because, you know, you want them all to look the same and look uniform when you go outside to put them on the grill.

And these really don't take, you know, long to cook.

So it's not something that you've gotta be standing over the grill forever either because it is hot outside.

Okey dokey.

Now you can get these shrimp.

If you do get frozen shrimp, there's nothing wrong with that.

Just make sure you give them time to thaw.

And it's a time saver by going with the peeled and deveined shrimp.

Just a bit of a time saver so you don't have to do that when you're getting ready to go ahead and grill.

These skewers, it's kind of something you know, it just, like I said earlier, it reminds me of summertime.

It's not really something that I grew up with, although we did have kabobs of different, you know, different types of things, whether it was just your traditional mushrooms and onions and steak or mushrooms and onions and chicken and bell peppers and things like that.

But once again, this is just kind of like a different take.

It's something different.

I think the herb lemon marinade is gonna really kinda just give it that nice crisp summertime flavor.

Let's go ahead and make a couple more of these and then we'll go ahead and make sure that the grill's ready to go and we can get started out there.

(upbeat music) We've got our grill up to temperature.

I'm looking for somewhere between three, 325, but since we're gonna be cooking with the coals, I'll be keeping a close eye on it, and I'll have the coals pretty close to the grate.

If you're cooking on a gas grill, I'd probably say stick to medium, medium high, and keep a good eye on it.

Once again, the sausage is already cooked, and the shrimp are only gonna take a few minutes per side.

And we just want to get a nice good crisp on the vegetables and kind of leave them a little on the al dente side.

So we've got our grill ready to go.

Let's go ahead and get our kabobs on there.

(kabobs sizzling) All right, you can hear that sizzle, you know it's going.

I do love the sound of that sizzle.

Sounds like summertime, right?

We're gonna let this go.

Keep a close eye.

I'm gonna go ahead and raise the charcoal, the tray up just a little bit, kind of speed this along.

But if you're gonna be cooking that close to the coals, you've got to keep an eye on it.

Close your grill.

It'll keep a lot of the heat inside so that way it'll also cook nice and evenly as well as get that nice grill mark on the bottom side as you flip them.

Living in the south, it's really wonderful because we've got the opportunity to cook outside almost all year round, minus a couple months in the early winter there, or in the late winter I should say.

But yeah, cooking outside, in the south, it's kind of almost a tradition.

It's an extension of your kitchen depending on what you're doing, we're always outside, grilling, smoking, barbecuing, doing something, cooking outside for me, it's just, I don't know, I like cooking with fire.

I like cooking over hot coals.

It's also very hands-on.

So if you've got the kind of personality I do where you want to keep keeping an eye on it and keep checking on things, I think it lends itself to that as well.

Although, you know, I will quote one of my really good friends that taught me this a long time ago, and I did learn a lot from grilling about him.

Try not to open your grill lid too much to keep checking in on there.

And he always used to tell me, he's one of the few people I let call me Timmy.

He used to tell me, "Timmy, if you're looking, you ain't cooking."

So keep that in mind because you wanna keep that heat in there so that way it gets cooked evenly and all around.

Oh yeah, these are looking right about done.

So we're gonna go ahead and get these pulled off and get ready for dinner.

(upbeat music) Well, we've made it to the end of another day.

Another dinner's on the table here at "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

Did everybody have fun today?

All right, nothing beats a pool day, does it?

Okay, well, we've got some couscous and some skewers over that.

I think this is a great meal.

Let's try it.

- Can I help, bud?

Are you doing okay?

Get it off okay, good.

- I think you're gonna go for the sausage, and I think Brooklyn's gonna love the shrimp.

(Sebastian mumbling) (Tim laughs) - I meant on your plate.

You're gonna try the sausage and the couscous first?

(Sebastian muttering) Here, I'll help you.

Like so.

- Here, focus on this guy right here, okay?

- You got some onions, some shrimp.

Make sure you take your tail off, okay?

- Grab your fork, okay?

- Who's gonna help me with dishes tonight?

- Not me.

- Ooh!

(Sebastian speaking indistinctly) - So it's probably gonna be (indistinct) - We're getting a thumbs up or thumbs down?

- On this meal.

Two thumbs up from Brooklyn.

Two thumbs up from Sebastian.

I'll take it, I'll take it.

Well thanks for joining us "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

Another successful meal.

The kids are happy after a long day in the pool.

So after this, maybe a little ice cream, and then it's gonna be story time and bedtime.

This recipe and all the other recipes can be found online at pbscharlotte.org.

And thanks for joining us at my dinner table.

I look forward to seeing you the next time.

(upbeat music) (bright music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.