Featured Forkfuls

IHHS 2010 Find: Firewire Flexible Skewers

This is another new product we found at the Home and Housewares Show this year. Now, there are certainly a lot of grilling products out there – it seems like if you sell any type of outdoor or cooking products you’re practically obligated to make grilling accessories. They also seem to be another one of those ubiquitous “dad gifts” along with ties and aftershave, so odds are you’ve either given or receive “the next best” set of grilling tongs, skewers or whatever.

Even with all that, I’m an unashamed grilling junkie. I’ve been known to shovel a path to the grill in winter just because I can’t wait for Spring to get my fix. So, I tend to approach new grilling products like a pyromaniac looks at fire: I’ve been burned, but I can’t help but be excited to try again!

These flexible grilling skewers certainly looked like they might be worth the excitement: the flexible wire has a sort of mesh-like/braided texture, so the food wouldn’t just spin around the skewer when you turn it (one of my major pet peeves of skewer cooking!). They also have a loop on one end that allows you to thread the other end through to form a big loop. The cool trick is that you can leave that loose end hanging off the edge of the grill and it stays cool to the touch, so your skewers have a built in handle. The other nice thing is that since the skewer is in a loop, you can easily flip them over and they stay put (unlike straight skewers, which have the tendency to roll around all over the place.

So, we’ve had some amazingly nice weather here lately, so firing up the grill was practically mandatory (and no snow shoveling necessary)! We tried a few things that while delicious, are sometimes pretty annoying to try and grill on skewers: shrimp and mushrooms. Both have a tendency to spin around on the skewer, which makes it difficult to flip them properly. So, in comes the FireWire – first off, leaving the handle part of the skewer hanging outside of the grill totally works – I did all the grilling without tongs or a grill mitt – my bare hands were all that were needed. Second, turning the skewers is as easy as grabbing the handle end, lifting the looped skewer, and flipping it over. The bottom line: these are the best skewers I’ve ever used. As far as I can tell, the only downside to them at all is that the loop shape isn’t quite as economical a use of the grill  space (you can stack straight skewers right next to each other), but that’s pretty minor stuff. All in all, the ease of using these skewers way more than outweighs any loss of grill space in my book!

If you want to give them a go yourself (and I highly recommend that you do), you can nab them on Amazon. Happy grilling!

© 2009 The Foodie Forkful.