Teriyaki Chicken Kabobs

Dan loves Island’s Restaurant and their “Yaki Tacos” – A few months ago I found a copycat recipe online and I recreated them. Part of the recipe included making  the teriyaki sauce. I wasn’t feeling like tacos, so I decide to make the sauce for kabobs instead. I had 1/2 a pineapple left from the fruit salad and I wanted to use it up.

The Ingredients for the Teriyaki Sauce:

1 3/4 Cups Water
1 Tablespoon Cornstarch
1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
3/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Garlic Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Onion Powder
2 Teaspoons Minced Fresh Ginger

The first step is to add the water to a medium saucepan. I had the heat set to between medium and high. I then whisked in the cornstarch. I added all of the remaining ingredients and brought things to a boil – I then turned the heat down to medium and let it simmer for about  8 minutes. It starts to thicken after about 5 minutes.

At this point I added some of the juice from the pineapple that I had cut up – it was about 2 Tablespoons. Once I felt that the sauce was the right consistency, I extracted a cup of it and poured it in a bowl over the chicken. I decided to use Foster Farm’s chicken tenders. I threaded them onto the skewers and it worked out great! I have to say, touching and cutting raw chicken is NOT my favorite thing to do. I will dive into ground beef bare handed for meat loaf… but chicken is a different story. The slime factor is too huge for this girl.

The Simple Kabob Ingredients:

Minus the chicken… it was already in the bowl marinating. I got the veggies cut up while the teriyaki sauce simmered on the stove.

A rainbow of veggie/fruit yum!

The neighbors were having a huge family BBQ and I must have opened the sliding glass door 25 times during this kabob process. Out with the food and camera, in to wash utensils, out with camera… thankfully they were the side neighbors and the fence is high enough to hide my shenanigans.

I constructed the skewers and took them and the remaining sauce out to the grill.

I made one skewer with the pineapple mixed in with the peppers, onion and chicken… but I wasn’t sure how fast it would cook, so I decided to leave it out of the second skewer. That way, if it burned, I’d still have a full skewer of pineapple that I could throw on the grill at a later time.

I did end up putting the “all pineapple” skewer on about 10 minutes into the grilling, but it didn’t really matter that I separated the pineapple – the other mixed skewer did just fine. Next time I will probably also spray the grill – the chicken stuck to it a bit at first.

I basted the kabobs with a much longer brush throughout the cooking process.

They were perfection! Super moist with the right amount of teriyaki flavor. I served them with a side of sticky rice. I probably won’t buy store-bought teriyaki ever again. I love that I can use low sodium soy sauce when I make my own.  It was the perfect dinner for the amazing weather we had yesterday.

I spent about 5 hours gardening during the morning/afternoon and when I say “gardening” that’s sort of a stretch – it was more like weed pulling and plant trimming. I should also note – I apparently used muscles that I didn’t even know I had. Picking up that platter last night was a struggle.

Even though the first day of Summer isn’t until June 21st – it sure felt like Summer grillin’ to me.