I wanted to do something special for dinner, without causing too much of a mess in the kitchen. I had a pork roast already, so I decided to make BBQ pork and pineapple skewers on the barbeque.

The sometimes unfortunate side effect of not being able to grocery shop whenever I want to leads to many kitchen substitutions. For example, having to fish out the chunks of pineapple out of the bag of frozen fruit medley. Something I always have on hand are those little plastic lemon and lime juice balls that they sell right next to the fresh guys in the produce aisle; a decent substitution and I endorse them fully.

To go with the skewers, I decided to make some nacho chips out of my old tortillas as well as a salsa fresca with some red onion scraps, my lime juice, the rest of my one jalapeno, and my cilantro of questionable freshness.

Once the pineapple was thawed out, I cubed up the pork and marinated the whole lot of it in cheapo BBQ sauce and some lime juice from my squeezy bottle. Simple and easy.

So in the end I had more pork than pineapple (see left-most meat sticks). I half-cooked my skewers in the oven first. I find the pineapple can burn at unequal rates to the pork (due to the sugar content of fruit), so by doing the majority of the cooking process in the oven it will ensure you have appropriate BBQ grill marks rather than something that looks like Mt. Vesuvius.

I cut my tortillas into strips rather than the traditional triangle shape to be different. I’m using the cheapest vegetable oil (in the largest integer) that I can buy. I have never known any difference across brands/price points. Also, if you aren’t a regular fryer, try a few test tortillas first to make sure your oil temp is correct. Start at medium heat and let the oil warm up for probably five minutes (or longer, depending on stove types and age etc.).

As soon as they are out of the oil, hit your chips right away with your seasoning. I have used a habanero lime grinder mix that I got at Winners Homesense when we still had civil liberties like casual shopping.

Here are the skewers after being finished on the BBQ. Once they come out of the oven, I re-doused them in more BBQ sauce since the baking will likely result in moisture loss.

And here is what’s left of the chips and the salsa. I can’t take credit for the tomatillo sauce (green goop) as that is store bought. Still tasty though!