Grilling – Tricks for Perfectly Grilled Kababs

Honestly, while your typical "combination" skewer looks more impressive, I find it's much better to grill them in separate skewers. One for beef, one for chicken, one for peppers, one for onions, etc. That way, you can cook each to their preferred temperature and not have to worry about the exact problem you're running into.

As far as cross contamination, you'll definitely minimize any risk grilling them as separate skewers, but since you didn't have chicken in the mix you should be relatively safe anyway. Once you sear the outside of the beef, you should be safe.

I picked this method up from an Alton Brown recommendation on a Good Eats episode (Scene 10), and found that I get considerably better results when I do it this way.

NO--I cannot emphasize this enough--you CANNOT use nylon rope (or any other random rope you have laying around, unless you can be guaranteed that it is 100% cotton or hemp)! It will melt all over your food. Cooking twine is generally, if memory serves, pure cotton and thus safe (though perhaps not tasty) to eat.

Tying your beans in bundles would be counterproductive; only the outer beans would cook. Unless you did some sort of weaving thing like a bamboo mat, at which point I would have to question whether the extra work actually saved you any time.

The mistake that most people make when grilling long skinny things is, as you say, to roll them. Or to flip them as though they were bigger objects. The trick is to turn them from their ends, so it's just a matter of grabbing the end--straight on, parallel to the bean--with your tongs, twist your wrist, move on to the next one.