Tuesday Night's Dinner: Beef Kebab

I felt so awful today, my mood was so low that I actually felt physically sick, almost as if I had the flu. However, I pushed through as I really wanted to keep learning to cook (and I knew I wasn't actually sick) and made some beef kebabs for dinner. This was not entirely planned as I originally thought last night's dinner would last for two days, which it didn't. It was amazingly easy though! For some reason, I had always thought that making kebabs was really difficult, but this was a breeze- it was basically a question of combining all the ingredients in a bowl together, mixing and shaping.

The ingredients I used were:
300g (one packet) of minced beef
Half an onion, finely chopped
One teaspoon of garam masala
Half a teaspoon of cumin
One teaspoon of paprika
A handful of coriander leaves, chopped roughly
A handful of mint leaves, chopped roughly
A liberal sprinkling of salt (enough to enhance the flavour)
Metal skewers (technically not ingredients but they still help the meal to come together)

I emptied the packet of minced beef into a bowl. I then chopped half an onion (I used red, but I think green would work just as well), added that plus all the other ingredients into the bowl with the mince.

I mixed everything together thoroughly with my hands, making sure all the ingredients were well incorporated.

I then moulded the kebabs around the metal skewers, forming small sausage-like shapes (though they can be as large as you like), and laid them to rest in a tin foil dish.

I cooked them in an oven set to 190 degrees Celsius (it's probably best to pre heat the oven, though I didn't and they still turned out fine) and cooked them for 20 minutes. I assume they would probably take less time to cook if you pre heat the oven before hand. The cooking time may also be altered if you don't use metal skewers as they help heat the insides of the meat (because metal conducts heat, basic science, of course!).

As I said, it was really easy (even easier than last night's dinner!) and they tasted great! We ate them with some naan bread that we had in the house, though I think they would really compliment anything (especially pitta bread, cous cous or a salad). The only downside is that they didn't make very many- it only produced six small kebabs, which isn't really sufficient for a family of four, though you can easily overcome this by using more mince (though if you do double the amount of meat used don't double the spices, only add a bit more, as their flavours are pretty strong!).I definitely plan on making this again sometime soon; I only wish I had some pictures to show how good they looked!