Afghan Chicken Kebabs

Going out to Afghan restaurants, we often got kebabs, eating delicious pieces of grilled meat over rice and with bread. If we were going to explore Afghan food, it only seemed right to include a kebab, and the yogurt-marinated kebabs I found on Afghan Culture Unveiled, kebab-e-murgh, looked and sounded delicious. The big issue we faced was that we don't have a restaurant-quality grill or any grill at all, and we needed to use our grill pan. But I was hopeful we would at least get close and have some tasty grilled chicken kebabs.

The ingredients for the kebabs were:

- 2 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts ($8.98)
- 2 cups of whole milk Greek yogurt ($2.75)
- garlic powder (a lot) ($0.05)
- about 1 tsp ground coriander ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- salt ($0.02)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- grapeseed oil for brushing grill pan ($0.20)

The cost for the kebabs was about $12.32, the majority of which was the chicken. We probably could have made less chicken or frozen chicken and reduced the cost, but didn't feel like defrosting the frozen chicken when we could get fresh, better-quality chicken on our grocery trip.

The steps we followed were:

1. Combine the yogurt, garlic powder, coriander, cumin, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Slice up the chicken to desired size and cover with the marinade.

2. Put the chicken and yogurt marinade into sealable bags, and marinate chicken in fridge overnight.

3. Take chicken out of fridge about 30 minutes before grilling. [That was the plan, but it turned into an hour. The chicken seemed fine.]

4. Put chicken into a colander to allow yogurt marinade to drip off. If any marinade remains, wipe off as much as possible before grilling so the yogurt doesn't burn. [Writing this out, I just realized that maybe I was supposed to put it in the colander for at least part of those 30 minutes instead of just letting it sit out on the counter?]

5. Heat a grill pan and brush with grapeseed oil.

6. Grill chicken pieces until cooked through on both sides. [I am definitely not an expert at grilling. I never know when they're done and always worry about undercooked chicken, so it ends up overdone 80% of the time. Since the time I wrote that in July 2020, we have gotten an instant read meat thermometer.]

7. Once chicken is done, wrap in foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.

I also made a small portion of yogurt dip using the same recipe as the previous aushe burida, bolani, and borani banjan, but this time using dried mint. I think it turned out fine, although the fresh mint (and fresh garlic) gave the first version of the dip a much stronger flavor which we really liked. But for an everyday sauce, where you may not have fresh mint on hand unless you grow it since it goes bad so quickly, dried mint definitely works.

How were the kebabs? Not as good as they would be on a real grill. Not as good as they would be if made by someone who doesn't have a habit of overcooking chicken. Some pieces were kind of juicy, but others were dry. Probably because I also sliced them up rather unevenly given the shapes of the chicken breasts. The flavor was good, but it mostly just tasted like grilled chicken without any strong spice flavors. We haven't made a lot of yogurt-marinated meats but thought the yogurt was supposed to tenderize the meat, and these just seemed texturally like other grilled chicken we've had before. [Note: I learned when making Lebanese shish tawook later in the year that plain yogurt instead of Greek yogurt might make all the difference.] They made for a good dinner, but we might have to keep working on it to see if they improve with better grilling technique!