Shish Kebab: Another Spiffy Thing I Probably Will Never Build Chit Chat Discuss Shish Kebab: Another Spiffy Thing I Probably Will Never Build in the General forums; I got this idea last night from watching Alton Brown’s “Good Eats.” He dug a trench, lined it with brick, ...

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I got this idea last night from watching Alton Brown’s “Good Eats.” He dug a trench, lined it with brick, and filled it partially with sand. The trench was then filled with charcoal embers and the shish kebabs laid crossways across using the brick as support. Several people could sit around it and tend their own shish kebabs.

I don’t have the knees for getting on the ground a lot, and although it’s hysterical to watch me get up, I just as soon skip that as much as possible. After a little playing around on Google’s Sketch Up I came up with a masonry table with the top partially cantilevered to allow chairs to scoot up under it. The drawback with that is that it’s really big and it’s going to stay where ever you put it forever. So my next thought was to use a table, cut a hole in the middle, attach metal duct work (well supported), line the sides with half brick and fill with sand for the same effect.

I haven’t yet worked out what type of table to use. Metal runs the risk of transmitting the heat, and wood has a nasty tendency to burn. Plastic would be fun, if I really did want to have a molten mess of plastic in my backyard. Okay, so it needs some work -but I still think that it would be pretty cool!