You know what they say about trying to place a square peg into a round hole, or trying to force a square through a circle? That’s sort of the issue when you make kabobs on a Big Green Egg.
It can be done, but there’s an elegant solution to this geometrical problem and you won’t ever want to go back to your traditional kabob world. It’s called Fire Wire, one of the best Big Green Egg accessories you can buy. The flexible grilling skewer is made of cable material that allows you to swirl Fire Wire Kabobs in round shapes on your round cooking surface.
Kabob purists will note the history of “sword meat” and say it has to be a long and usually metal shaft filled with food, right? The Big Green Egg allows for more fun possibility and more art. Besides, the same Smiths company in Arkansas that owns Fire Wire is also respected as knife-edge experts since 1888. If they like going flexible, then how can you argue?
During a visit to the Lodge Cast Iron store in Tennessee, I added a two-pack of Fire Wire cable-style grill strings to my basket. I usually cook for just me and my wife, and I am the meat eater while she is the vegetarian. So each strand allows us to add our own favorites, and usually that just means subtracting the meat from her flexible stainless steel skewer. Get another two-pack of these if you are going to be grilling for bigger crowds, and even better let everyone wire their own kabobs!
Why You Should Cook These Kabobs on Your Big Green Egg
Size up the competition and you can see why a flexible skewer is better.
The Large Big Green Egg is the most popular size of the brand’s seven kamado ceramic cooker styles, and that’s the one I bought after looking at so many choices. The grid diameter is 18 1/4 inches wide, or 262 square inches. That is indeed a large cooking surface, but when you want to make a bunch of kabobs, it’s an issue. Even if you have one traditional straight skewer that is 18 inches in length, only that skewer will fit snugly across the center of the Big Green Egg grid. As you go out from center, the length of each subsequent skewer must be increasingly shorter due to the circle involved. So the more food you are preparing, the more likely you will be to shorten skewers to 14 inch max and maybe less.
The downside of just using a lot of smaller skewers.
Fire Wire will hold twice as much as traditional skewers. The Big Green Egg company sells bamboo skewers as EGGsessories that are 10 inches in length, and there is a nice and healthy tradition with using that material. But if you go this route you wind up with a lot of little skewers and that means turning all of them with the same frequency, which translates into (a) a lot more work and (b) a lot more lost heat. It also means waiting a half-hour for the bamboo to soak in water, and possible burnt ends that require wrapping with aluminum foil.
Sticking skewers out the side of your EGG is not recommended.
It is perfectly normal to have a thermometer’s wire(s) protruding through the side of a Big Green Egg, because the wire is so thin. That is the same case with FireWire, which lets you leave the spear point hanging outside the EGG during most of the cook so you can turn it easily. You shouldn’t let metal kabob spears hang out of an EGG, though, even if they are flat. It’s OK on a barbecue gas grill or kettle grill, but potentially troublesome on the EGG. The heat can leak out of the sides, and far worse, a metal skewer could damage your gasket. Replacing that means a long chore of disassembling and reassembling the metal band as you remove the lid, and those are time-consuming and precision steps to avoid at all costs.
Ingredients
- 1.045 lbs sirloin steak
- 1 red onion
- 4 Baby Bella mushrooms
- 2 corn on the cob
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 summer squash
- 1 zucchini
- 16 oz bottle Pirates Gold Original Marinade
- 1 tbsp Old Bay Seasoning
- 1/4 cup Bertoli cooking olive oil
How To Cook These Fire Wire Flexible Skewer Kabobs on a Big Green Egg (Step By Step)
- Clean and start your Big Green Egg. Shake out the natural lump charcoal leftover from the previous cook and remove the ash. Then add more BBQ lump charcoal and 2-3 cubes of SpeediLight starter and ignite the fire. Use Big Green Egg grid lift tool to place cast iron cooking grid back on.
- Leave lid open for the first 7-10 minutes so you can get fire over 400 quickly, then keep top and bottom vents open to maintain high temperature.
- Chop sirloin and vegetables into chunks per your kabob size preference. A standard corn on the cob will yield 3-4 sections. Don’t make the meat chunks too big, because they are going to cook the same amount of time as the veggies and you don’t want to burn the latter.
- Pour whole bottle of marinade into a large bowl and marinate the meat for a half-hour.
- Put veggies into a large bowl with the cooking olive oil and mix so they are very lightly coated.
- String the Fire Wire through the meats and veggies. (I only used about 3/4 of the meat and the rest went to our happy Bernedoodle.) Give the steel tip an extra twist and push to get through the tough center of the corn sections. Fire Wire is thick enough to hold all the pieces nicely. Thread the tip through the loop so you can hold the whole strand by the tip.
- Burp the EGG twice by barely opening the lid, to avoid a large gush of smoke in your face. Then open the lid fully and arrange Fire Wire skewers with your own design. I was making Skillet Cornbread at the same time so I swirled the kebabs around that 10 1/2-inch cast iron skillet. This is where the flexible kebob wire beats regular straight skewers, hands down.
- Leave the Fire Wire tip on the cooking surface until the EGG temperature hits 180, for sanitation. Then, wearing a hot glove, remove the tip only and let it hang outside the grill. The tip will cool to the touch within two minutes, and after that you can use it as a handle to turn the kabobs.
- Give the meat a quick check before removing the Fire Wire. Always remember that meat will keep cooking after you remove it, so if you want it Medium on the table, look for extra pink.
- Remove food from the Big Green Egg. Close the top and bottom vents and the smoker will extinguish itself in about 15 minutes.
- Allow a couple of minutes for the Fire Wire to return to ambient temperature, and then hold up the cable cord by the loop end and just slide the food off onto a platter.
- For cleanup, wash the skewers in the sink and just give your EGG’s cast iron grid a once-over with a safe scrubber that doesn’t leave metal fibers. It’s that easy.
Variations and Substitutions
- Skip the marinade and the veggies’ cooking oil coating to further decrease the calories.
- Another nice advantage of the Fire Wire BBQ grilling tool is the ability to marinate your food AFTER it has been skewered, so as an alternative you can simply drop the whole Fire Wire into a large storage bag or bowl and seal and marinade for up to an hour. That way you only have to handle meat once during the process. Pirates Gold Original Marinade works with veggies as well, but we preferred to only rub light oil onto the veggies.
- Big Green Egg offers a rEGGulator rain cap that fits right into the sleeve of your rEGGulator. I have the original daisy wheel cover, so I’m leaning toward buying the newer rEGGulator to take advantage of this accessory. It rained hard on my uncovered back deck two of the last three times I cooked, and it is a hindrance because the drops will limit your desired temperature no matter whether they trickle through the cap or whether you fully close the cap and reduce airflow. The Big Green Egg works great in all elements, but trickle-top rain can be an annoyance.
- Grill baskets or grill tops are another way to enjoy kabob fixings without any skewer or wire at all. Those just grill the items loosely, so it’s not technically a kabob, but it tastes the same and is even easier.
- Some people like to put meats on one skewer and veggies on different ones, accounting for different cooking times. You could always put meat on a long straight skewer, and then use Fire Wire for just the veggie strands. Lots of options.
Tips and Tricks
- Use a pair of disposable nitrile grilling gloves as you string the food pieces onto the Fire Wire. It makes it easier to grip the tip, especially with slippery kabobs wet with marinade and oil.
- The Big Green Egg EGGspander accessory gives you up to 35 different combinations to arrange 3-tier cooking grids and go more vertical with your kamado cooker. You can experiment with half-moon cooking grids in that arrangement, and doing so will allow you to climb with your FireWire kabob strands so that it creates even more space for a larger quantity of flexible kabob wires.
- After you remove your food from the Big Green Egg, you’ll have plenty of roaring fire left just in case you want to pop any other food like chicken breasts onto the EGG for the upcoming week before you close the vents. This is a good time to prep some meals for the week. If not, close the vents and it will just mean less charcoal left over for your next cook.
The Big Green Egg is so versatile for grilling, smoking and baking recipes. Cooking this way is an art, and if you add some flexible skewers you can shape some real visual art while you’re at it.
Big Green Egg Steak Kabobs
Ingredients
- 1 lbs sirloin steak
- 1 red onion
- 4 baby bella mushrooms
- 2 ears of corn, on the cob
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1 summer squash
- 1 zucchini
- 16 oz Pirates Gold Original Marinade
- 1 tbsp Old Bay seasoning
- 1/4 cup olive oil
Instructions
- Clean and start your Big Green Egg. Shake out the natural lump charcoal leftover from the previous cook and remove the ash. Then add more BBQ lump charcoal and 2-3 cubes of SpeediLight starter and ignite the fire. Use Big Green Egg grid lift tool to place cast iron cooking grid back on.
- Leave lid open for the first 7-10 minutes so you can get fire over 400 quickly, then keep top and bottom vents open to maintain high temperature.
- Chop sirloin and vegetables into chunks per your kabob size preference. A standard corn on the cob will yield 3-4 sections. Don’t make the meat chunks too big, because they are going to cook the same amount of time as the veggies and you don’t want to burn the latter.
- Pour whole bottle of marinade into a large bowl and marinate the meat for a half-hour.
- Put veggies into a large bowl with the cooking olive oil and mix so they are very lightly coated.
- String the Fire Wire through the meats and veggies. (I only used about 3/4 of the meat and the rest went to our happy Bernedoodle.) Give the steel tip an extra twist and push to get through the tough center of the corn sections. Fire Wire is thick enough to hold all the pieces nicely. Thread the tip through the loop so you can hold the whole strand by the tip.
- Burp the EGG twice by barely opening the lid, to avoid a large gush of smoke in your face. Then open the lid fully and arrange Fire Wire skewers with your own design. I was making Skillet Cornbread at the same time so I swirled the kebabs around that 10 1/2-inch cast iron skillet. This is where the flexible kebob wire beats regular straight skewers, hands down.
- Leave the Fire Wire tip on the cooking surface until the EGG temperature hits 180, for sanitation. Then, wearing a hot glove, remove the tip only and let it hang outside the grill. The tip will cool to the touch within two minutes, and after that you can use it as a handle to turn the kabobs.
- Give the meat a quick check before removing the Fire Wire. Always remember that meat will keep cooking after you remove it, so if you want it Medium on the table, look for extra pink.
- Remove food from the Big Green Egg. Close the top and bottom vents and the smoker will extinguish itself in about 15 minutes.
- Allow a couple of minutes for the Fire Wire to return to ambient temperature, and then hold up the cable cord by the loop end and just slide the food off onto a platter.
- For cleanup, wash the skewers in the sink and just give your EGG’s cast iron grid a once-over with a safe scrubber that doesn’t leave metal fibers. It’s that easy.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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