Chicken Pineapple Kabobs

These Chicken Pineapple Kabobs are a show stopping dinner that’s perfect for everyday meals or parties! Tender, marinated chicken skewered with sweet gilled pineapple and vegetables. Serve these kabobs over rice or just enjoy them as is!

Why You’ll Love These Chicken Pineapple Kabobs

These Chicken Pineapple Kabobs are so fun and easy to make! Easy enough for everyday dinners and equally as gorgeous for parties and summer cook outs.

• Easy To Make: You can prep these kabobs ahead of time and then just throw them on the grill a few minutes before dinner time.
• Adaptable: Switch up the ingredients to what you like, or to use up what you have in the refrigerator. Scroll down for more ideas.
• Fun For Parties: Nothing says fun more than a chicken kabob. They look as good as they taste and with very little effort, kabobs always feel like a special meal.

Recipe Ingredients

As we mentioned, you can switch up many of the ingredients for this recipe, but this is the way we like to make them. Scroll to the recipe card at the end of the post for complete recipe amounts and ingredients.

• Chicken Breast: You can also use chicken thighs if you like, but we seem to always have boneless, skinless chicken breasts in our refrigerator or freezer.
• Red Onion: Yellow onion works too, but we love the color and sweet flavor of red onion for this recipe.
• Green Pepper: Any color bell pepper you like but green pepper does have a unique flavor to it that pairs well in this recipe.
• Pineapple: We do recommend using fresh pineapple because it’s more firm and works better on the grill.
• Hawaiian Barbecue Sauce: If you can’t find Hawaiian BBQ sauce, any sweet BBQ sauce will work, too. Also try using our homemade Huli Huli sauce instead.
• Asian Marinade: We’re using our Asian marinade to flavor the chicken, you can also grab a bottle from the store.

How To Make Chicken Kabobs

Not only are the chicken kabobs easy to make, but the flavor is out of this world delicious. Marinate the chicken and assemble the kabobs ahead of time and then just grill for a few minutes right before dinner.

1. Marinate the chicken: Start by cubing the chicken into large pieces like you see below, about 2″ cubes, roughly the same size. Mix up the marinade and pour it over the chicken and refrigerate for at least 6 hours or up to overnight.
2. Prep the ingredients: Cut the peppers, onions and pineapple into large pieces like you see in the pictures below. A 2″ dice works well for these chicken kabobs. You can thread the ingredients on in any order that you like, but we like to use a pattern like you see below, keeping the chicken nestled in between the peppers and onion.
3. Grill the kabobs: Preheat the grill to 400 degrees. Clean the grates and brush with oil to prevent the kabobs from sticking. Place the kabobs on the grill and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until the chicken is cooked through.
4. Baste: Baste the kabobs during the last couple of minutes of grilling time with a store bought teriyaki or Hawaiian BBQ sauce. You can also use our homemade Huli Huli Sauce, which is what we use for these chicken kabobs.

Variations

You can use so many different types of ingredients when your making kabobs. Not only can you switch up the vegetables but you can also switch up the protein.

Instead of chicken try using pork or beef. Make sure to follow the recommended temperatures for when pork and beef are cooked through. Pork is done when the meat registers 145 degrees. Beef can be cooked to your liking, check out our Teriyaki Steak recipe for desired temperatures of beef.

Also try using mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, eggplant or zucchini on kabobs. Stone fruit is another idea for the fruit, like peaches or plums. Another way to grill kabobs is to thread all of the protein (in this case the chicken) onto skewers by themselves and then thread all of the vegetables onto separate skewers.

This works especially well if the ingredients that your using will be done at varying times. For instance if you are using beef and you like it to be rare, you’ll want to pull those off the grill before things like peppers and onions will become soft and caramelized.

Other Ways To Cook Kabobs

These chicken kabobs are grilled – and you can use any kind of grill you like. Gas or charcoal, or even a grill pan inside.

Alternately, you can use the oven to make these kabobs as well. Place them on a foil lined baking sheet and cook them at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, turning in between. Use the broiler to finish them off after brushing on the sauce at the end.

How To Serve

When we serve these Chicken Pineapple Kabobs we like to make a side dish like this Cilantro Lime Rice. The rice can be served on the side or used as a bed for the kabobs.

For serving the kabobs, you can place the kabobs on a platter for everyone to grab, but do pull them off for the kids. The ends of skewers like these, especially the metal ones are very sharp.

Other side dish ideas for chicken kabobs can include:

• Air Fryer Baked Potatoes
• Sherry Mushrooms
• Mini Roasted Ranch Peppers
• Mexican Street Corn Salad
• Parmesan Bacon Orzo
• Zucchini Pasta

Tips For Success

When making these chicken kabobs, or any type of kabob recipe, we’ve got some tips to help you along in the process.

As easy as making kabob recipes can be, there are a few things to keep in mind when making them. One thing is that the ingredients should all be cut to approximately the same size. This is primarily because you want all the ingredients on the kabob to be touching in the grill.

If, for instance, you have a very large piece of pepper or onion next to a piece of chicken, the chicken isn’t going to get surface contact with the grill. So not only will you not get those beautiful grill marks, but the chicken may not cook properly.

Another idea to keep in mind when making kabobs is the cooking time of the ingredients that you’re using. These chicken pineapple kabobs are a favorite of ours because all of the ingredients cook at approximately the same time.

If we had softer vegetables like a tomato, they might be done before the firmer peppers and onions and potentially fall off the skewer. So if you have softer items like tomatoes or zucchini, you’ll want to cut the firmer items smaller so that they cook up quicker.

Looking For More Grilling Recipes?

• Easy Grilled Salmon Recipe
• Grilled BBQ Pork Chops
• Grilled Teriyaki Chicken
• Grilled Chicken Nuggets
• BEST BBQ Ribs Recipe

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