The first time steak kabobs ever stopped me cold, I was standing in front of a mangal at a pistachio harvest festival in Gaziantep, Turkey, waiting my turn behind a woman buying six skewers wrapped in newspaper. The vendor’s name was Mahmut. His hands moved like he had been doing this since before I was born, probably because he had.
The chalkboard behind him said 40 lira a skewer. He charged me 35 because I asked twice what the spice rub was and he liked that.
The Stall Where I First Tasted Them
The festival took over a side street off Inonu Caddesi for three days every September. Mahmut’s stall was wedged between a guy selling roasted chickpeas and a woman ladling out ayran from a copper urn. The smoke from his grill hung at face height and made my eyes water in a way I did not mind.
He worked two skewers at a time. Beef on one, peppers and onion on a second, both moving over the coals at different speeds. When I asked him why he did not just thread everything together like I had seen in every cookout photo back home, he laughed and said the vegetables would be soup before the meat was ready. Of course they would.
That is the part most American versions get wrong, and I was one of the people getting it wrong for years. In Turkey, where sis kebap actually comes from, meat and vegetables are grilled on separate skewers so each one finishes at its proper doneness. Threading them together is an American invention. A pretty one. But an invention.
How Steak Kabobs Even Became a Thing
The word kebab itself just means skewered roasted meat, and the dish traces back to nomadic peoples in Central Asia who grilled cubes of lamb over open fires. It travelled west through Anatolia, picked up vegetables when it crossed into Greece, and landed in American backyards in the 1950s right when the Weber kettle hit the suburbs.
Beef was the American switch. The original Middle Eastern shish kebab is lamb. We swapped in sirloin because that is what was in the supermarket case and what people wanted to grill on the Fourth of July. Steak kabobs, as Americans know them, are basically a post-war love letter to the Turkish original written in beef.
I find this stuff fascinating and I will not apologise for it.
Bringing the Recipe Back to My Kitchen
Back in Los Angeles, I tried to recreate Mahmut’s marinade three times before I gave up trying to clone it exactly. His version leaned heavily on pomegranate molasses and Aleppo pepper, which I had to special-order from a Persian grocery in Westwood, and even then it was not quite right. So I built my own version. American steak kabobs, but with the lessons from his stall baked in.
The marinade I landed on is soy, Worcestershire, Dijon, brown sugar, lemon, and a frankly aggressive amount of garlic. Five cloves. I almost said four. No, five.
I do thread the vegetables on the same skewer as the beef most of the time, because I cook for friends and the photos matter and people expect a kabob to look like a kabob. But if I am cooking just for me on a Tuesday, I separate them. Mahmut would approve.
What I Used
- 2 lb top sirloin, trimmed and cubed into pieces a little bigger than a walnut
- One third cup olive oil
- One quarter cup low-sodium soy sauce
- 3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, squeezed by hand because my zester is somewhere in a drawer I have not opened in months
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp packed light brown sugar
- 5 cloves garlic, minced fine
- 1 tsp coarse black pepper and three quarters tsp kosher salt
- 2 red bell peppers, cut into squares
- 1 large red onion, cut into wedges and separated into two-layer stacks
- 8 oz cremini mushrooms, whole
Inside the Marinade and on the Grill
The marinade does two jobs at once. The salt and soy pull moisture out of the surface of the beef, then the sugar and acid drag flavour back in, and an hour later the cubes are sitting in a glossy slick that clings instead of running off. Leave them in there longer than six hours and the lemon will start to soften the fibres past the point of pleasant. You get mush. I learned that one the hard way the second time I tested this and ended up with sad grey beef.
When the skewers hit the grates at around 475 F, the brown sugar hits first. You hear it before you see it. It bubbles, then darkens, then sets into a lacquered crust that catches on the iron in a satisfying way. Underneath that crust, the meat is barely getting started. Three minutes a side, four sides, basting once with the marinade I held back in a jar in the fridge.
The mushrooms are doing their own thing. They sweat, then collapse a little, then drink the marinade back up and turn dense and savoury in a way that raw mushrooms never hint at. The peppers blister. The onion holds its shape if you kept the layers thick enough.
I pull the skewers at 130 F on the thermometer. They climb to 135 while they rest under foil. Medium rare. Pink in the middle, dark crust on the outside, the juices pooling on the platter that I will sop up with pita later.
The Small Things That Matter
A few opinions, take them or leave them. Flat metal skewers are worth the eight dollars. Round ones let the meat spin when you try to turn them and you end up grilling the same side twice. If you only have wooden ones, soak them for a full thirty minutes, not the casual five.
Cut the beef bigger than you think. An inch and a quarter is the move. Smaller and it overcooks before it crusts. Bigger and the centre stays cold.
I serve these with warm pita, a bowl of garlic yogurt I whisk together while the meat rests, and lemon wedges. Sometimes rice. Last weekend it was just the kabobs and a tomato salad eaten on the back step because the kitchen was too hot. Better that way, honestly.
One Last Thing
I have not been back to Gaziantep since that September. I keep meaning to. Until then these are how I keep the memory of Mahmut’s stall alive, on a Saturday afternoon in my own backyard, with the grill smoking and someone asking what is in the marinade.
Steak Kabobs
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pat the sirloin cubes dry with paper towels and drop them into a large mixing bowl.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the olive oil, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, Dijon, brown sugar, garlic, black pepper, and salt until the sugar dissolves and the marinade looks glossy.
- Pour about three-quarters of the marinade over the beef and toss until every cube is coated. Reserve the remaining marinade in a covered jar in the refrigerator for basting.
- Transfer the beef and its marinade to a zip-top bag, press out the air, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 6 hours.
- About 30 minutes before grilling, pull the beef from the fridge so it can take the chill off. If using wooden skewers, soak them in water now.
- Thread the beef onto skewers, alternating with red bell pepper, red onion, and a mushroom every two or three pieces. Leave a small gap between each piece so the heat can move around the beef.
- Preheat the grill to medium-high, around 450 to 500 F. Scrape the grates clean and oil them lightly with a paper towel dipped in oil.
- Lay the skewers directly over the heat and grill for 3 minutes without moving them so the beef can build a crust.
- Turn the skewers a quarter turn and grill another 3 minutes. Repeat twice more, basting once or twice with the reserved marinade, for a total of 10 to 12 minutes.
- Check doneness with an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of a beef cube. Pull the skewers at 130 F for medium-rare or 140 F for medium.
- Transfer the skewers to a platter, tent loosely with foil, and rest for 5 minutes so the juices redistribute.
- Serve hot, straight off the skewers or slid onto plates, with lemon wedges alongside.