Armenian Shish Kebab

After my success with those tasty little lamb chops, I got brave. The only other way I ever liked lamb was in a shish kebab at the Armenian Fest at St. Mark’s in Springfield. Maybe I could make that too. I started looking online for recipes, starting at Adventures in Armenian Cooking. There were several variations to choose from, and I didn’t know which to choose so I kept searching online. I finally settled on this version because the ingredients just sounded right somehow, and it sounded pretty easy.
I procured a 5.25 pound boneless leg of Australian lamb at Price Rite.

There is a lot of fat and gristle and icky silver skin on that hunk of meat, and it turned out to be a time consuming job to trim it up and cut it into 2-inch cubes. I ended up with…

…about 2 pounds and 14 ounces of cubes and…

…2 pounds, 6 ounces of yuck.
I chopped a green pepper, a large yellow onion, 1/2 a cup of curley parsley (note to self: buy flat leaf parsley! It’s so much easier to chop.), and two large cloves of garlic and tossed it all with the meat cubes. Then I poured a cup of red wine over it all, covered it, and tucked it away in the fridge for about 28 hours. No, really. It wasn’t just four. I planned ahead this time.
The next day, it was ready for skewering.

Sorry the picture is blurry. Perhaps the meat is a little tipsy on that wine.

I left a little space between each piece, hoping to help it cook more evenly. I also chopped up some more green pepper, red pepper and onions and skewered them along with some large grape tomatoes.

Then, I was ready to grill.

Dang, my grill is filthy. Avert your eyes from the grates, observe only the tasty food chunks.

I stayed with the grill and rolled the kebabs around as they cooked. It didn’t actually take very long before they started charring up nicely.


Everything looked and smelled great. I served it with rice pilaf, plain yogurt and cucumbers, and pita bread. My husband couldn’t wait to taste it. With his first bite I got an, “Oh yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” In his learned half-Armenian opinion, he declared it very, very good. My stepdaughter and I liked it too. Success! I have silenced my lamb fears.