Kebabs are various cooked meat dishes, with their origins in Middle Eastern cuisine. Many variants are popular throughout Asia, and around the world. Kebab is a broad term covering a wide variety of grilled meat dishes. Although kebabs are often cooked on a skewer, many types of kebab are not. Kebab dishes can consist of cut up or ground meat or seafood, sometimes with fruits and vegetables; cooked on a skewer over a fire, or like a hamburger on a grill, baked in a pan in an oven, or as a stew; and served with various accompaniments according to each recipe. The traditional meat for kebabs is most often mutton or lamb, but regional recipes may include beef, goat, chicken, fish, or more rarely due to religious prohibitions, pork.

In most majority English-speaking countries, two of the most prevalent and familiar kebab dishes are shish kebab and doner kebab. Shish kebab is the skewered type of kebab (shish meaning sword or skewer and kebab meaning grilled meat). The doner kebab, on the other hand, is most commonly known as the source of the meat for gyros. ‘Doner’ refers to the rotating cooking process, like a rotisserie.) Essentially it’s layers of meat stacked into an inverted cone and slowly roasted by turning next to a vertical cooking element. The outer layer is slowly sliced as it cooks and served, most commonly in a pita as the famous gyro.

12 Kebabs for Kids