Julie's Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers

A fun new addition to any cookout!

Today is Father's Day! Since the weather's finally decent, we've been making good use of the grill, and that meant that I got to have my first lesson on how to use it from - you guessed it - my dad! Grilling is a family pass time passed down from my dad's dad to him, and I've been very interested in learning how to do it myself. Since the shrimp and pineapple kebabs featured in Julie and the Eagles and represented in her birthday lunch accessory set sounded tasty and seemed simple, I figured it was as good a place as any to start off. My dad also loves pineapple, so everything about this just seemed sort of perfect.

Besides, I'm still a little intimidated by cooking steaks, despite my more successful attempts in that arena so far.

So fun story: apparently while Christmas shopping for me, my mom had already decided to get Julie and Ivy as my next dolls, but my dad got his eyes on Julie's birthday set and decided we needed to get it. Why? Because he used to own a hibachi grill just like hers!

Unfortunately, said grill was apparently stolen during a tailgate party for a football game in the 80's, but I still thought that was pretty fun. We don't have one like it now, but we do have a grill, and I was pretty excited to get started.

These kebabs are really simple. Once you've cleaned your shrimp and cut up your pineapple, you just spear them on either metal skewers or bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water beforehand so they don't burn once they're on the grill.

Shrimp is a little bit of a pain to get on skewers, as it turns out, but otherwise, you shouldn't have too much of a difficult time doing it.

We also made a couple skewers with chicken and left over andouille sausage with onion. I didn't really do much with these, although I did get some tips on how to cook chicken on the grill - apparently it's a pretty irritating thing to cook because it's easy to under and overcook it - and they were definitely tasty when they were finished.

Shrimp is actually a pretty simple thing to grill, although it does have a tendency to get stuck on the metal if you're not being careful. This also ripped a few off the skewers, but there are probably worse things.

Some people insist you don't need to clean shrimp if you're grilling them, but I have to admit, that sounds totally gross to me. No, the intact vein won't make you sick when you cook it, but it still isn't something I'm excited about eating, ever! They cook very quickly, and do so best over a medium heat so you have more control over how fast it cooks to get it nice and even. Shrimp is pretty handy in that you can tell when it's cooked almost immediately, so just watch it carefully and take it off the grill as soon as it's nice and white, not gray and translucent.

It's definitely for the best to eat these quickly - I didn't love the taste once mine had cooled off a little bit, and I'm not sure why. Maybe mine were a little overcooked? I don't know. All I know is they tasted better when I started off, and the last two or so I ate weren't my favorite.

But overall? This was a pretty tasty experiment. I wasn't overly fond of the grilled shrimp, but everyone else seemed to like it, especially my dad, who's already said he wants to do something like this again sometime soon. However, the grilled pineapple was really tasty, and I would happily eat that again! It was far and away my favorite part, even though cooked fruit is something I generally shy away from or at least ignore in favor of other known favorite foods.

This was definitely a fun experiment, and I'd be more than happy to make them again. If you're looking for a way to spice up your next cookout, I'd definitely recommend giving this a try!

Although next time, I might just grill up some extra pineapple to eat on it's own...