Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Kabobs Recipe | Grilling

By
Joshua Bousel
a photo of Joshua Bousel, a Contributing Writer at Serious Eats
Joshua Bousel
Joshua Bousel is a Serious Eats old-timer, having started sharing his passion for grilling and barbecue recipes on the site back in 2008. He continues to develop grilling and barbecue recipes on his own site, The Meatwave, out of his home base of Durham, North Carolina.
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Updated August 09, 2018

You can't argue with meat on a stick. If someone can find a better way to pack an entire delicious grilled meal into such a perfectly portable mechanism, I'd like to hear it. On top of that, I've found kabobs to also be one of the best items to grill as a group. They get everyone around the grill, cooking their own food, and are done quickly, narrowing that time of great anticipation between when your food first hits the grill, until it reaches your mouth. This past weekend the kabobs flowed on and off my grill all afternoon, and out of three different varieties I offered, the clear crowd favorite was the bacon-wrapped chicken.

Kabobs are great enough as is, but bring some bacon into the fold, and you have yourself a masterpiece. To get these started, I soaked my chicken chunks and mushrooms in a fairly standard marinade of soy sauce, vinegar, honey, and green onion. This marinade brings a ton of flavor to the rather bland chicken breasts, and adds a lot of moisture to the mushrooms, which would normally dry out over of the high heat of the grill while waiting for the chicken to finish cooking. After letting the chicken bathe overnight, I wrapped each piece in a strip of thick cut bacon and threaded them onto skewers with the mushrooms and some pineapple chunks. Besides imparting the unbeatable flavor of bacon, the bacon fat also basted the chicken while cooking, which kept the cubes extremely moist.

Spanning the flavor spectrum from sweet to salty to earthy, these kabobs delivered the tastes of a full meal, needing no additional accompaniments. Maybe that's why these were the first to go. But even though people were disappointed after the last one was consumed, there were no complaints heard over having to eat the other sticks of meat.

Recipe Details

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken Kabobs Recipe | Grilling

Prep 35 mins
Cook 20 mins
Marinating Time 60 mins
Total 115 mins
Serves 6 servings

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil
  • 2 green onions, minced
  • 20 Cremini mushrooms, scrubbed
  • 3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1 inch cubes
  • 1 pound sliced thick cut bacon, cut in half
  • 1 pineapple, cut into 1 inch cubes
  • Bamboo Skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes prior to use

Directions

  1. Combine the soy sauce, cider vinegar, honey, canola oil, and green onions in a small bowl. Place the mushrooms and chicken into a large Ziploc bag, pour in marinade, and toss to coat evenly. Reseal the bag, removing as much air as possible, and marinate in the refrigerator at least 1 hour, preferably overnight.

  2. Light 1 chimney full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and spread coals out evenly over the charcoal grate.

  3. While the charcoal is lighting, wrap the chicken chunks with bacon, and thread onto skewers so that the bacon is secured. Alternate with mushroom and pineapple chunks. Reserve remaining marinade.

  4. Lightly oil the grill grate. Arrange skewers on the prepared grill. Cook, brushing occasionally with remaining soy sauce mixture, until bacon is crisp and chicken juices run clear, about 3-5 minutes per side, turning the kabobs 4 times. Serve immediately.

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