Stick around — Using a wide variety of ingredients, you can build kabobs to suit yourself

Kabobs, shish kebabs, skewers — whatever you choose to call them, they offer a lot of bite-size possibilities.

You can use lamb, beef, chicken, pork, seafood, veggies, fruit or even tofu, and get creative with different ingredient combinations of seasonings, marinades and sauces.

Portion control is another advantage. A little meat can feed a lot more people when it's in bite-size chunks and interspersed among onions, peppers and so on. And because the pieces are small, they usually take no more than 10 or 12 minutes to cook on a grill.

Many food historians credit the idea to Turkish soldiers who used their swords to cook meat over campfires. Many other cuisines have their own version of dinner-on-a-stick, with differing seasonings and marinades.

The French have brochettes; Greeks have souvlaki; in Southeast Asia, it's satay; in Japan, it's yakitori; in Brazil, it's churrasco.

In India, it's tandoori, so named because the skewered meat is cooked in a large clay oven called a tandoor. Here in Utah, tandoori is popular at the Royal India restaurants in Sandy and Bountiful, said owner Emmanuel Shanthakumar. He imported his ovens — which cost around $2,500 — from India, and uses mesquite charcoal in the bottom to heat the oven. The meat is marinated in yogurt and spices for 8-12 hours, then speared on huge, 3-foot-long skewers and placed vertically in the oven. The meat is taken off the skewer before serving.

"It's like cooking in a charcoal pit," said Shanthakumar. "The fat drips down at the bottom, and we trim our meats and use a lot of meat without the skin, so it's pretty low in fat. Some Indian restaurants use a gas oven, but I go with mesquite charcoal. It can be done on a grill at home, but the oven gives it a nice flavor."

The yogurt marinade tenderizes the meat. The seasoning mixture, called garam masala, contains spices such as cumin, paprika, cardamom and coriander. Garam masala is available in stores, but Shanthakumar buys the whole spices separately and grinds them together in a coffee grinder.

Tandoori is only one of the many styles of skewered meals. The book "Kabobs," by Sally Sampson (Wiley, $16.95), has 52 recipes, so you could do one a week for the whole year. Recipes include beef skewered on sprigs of rosemary, bacon-wrapped scallops, chicken and banana chunks brushed with honey butter.

Other mix-and-match possibilities include onions, zucchini or other squash, bell peppers, fresh mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, pineapple chunks, peach or apple wedges, ham, meatballs and sausage links.