The BEST Grilled Chicken Skewers with Homemade Pesto

Fire up the grill! 🔥 Learn how to make juicy grilled chicken skewers with fresh homemade pesto in this easy step-by-step recipe. Perfect for summer cookouts, weeknight dinners, or a healthy meal prep option.

🌿 Tender chicken is marinated and grilled to perfection, then paired with a vibrant, basil-packed pesto sauce that’s bursting with flavor.

Whether you’re hosting friends, cooking for family, or just craving something delicious and healthy, these grilled chicken skewers with pesto are a crowd-pleaser. Serve them with veggies, over rice, or on their own for a light and satisfying dish.

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📌Products Used:
🔴 Cuisinart Food Processor – https://amzn.to/3Vx3Kv0
🔴 Silicone Rubber Spatula Set of 5 – https://amzn.to/3HPLIkB
🔴 Glass Mixing Bowls with Lids – https://amzn.to/4frpYI0
🔴 Electric Pepper Grinder – https://amzn.to/4lGQVd1

⚠️Disclaimer: As an Amazon associate, I earn from any qualifying purchases. This is NOT a sponsored video. Some links are affiliated links, which means if you do purchase something I will receive a small commission. This does not cost you extra.
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Chicken Skewers with Pesto Recipe

Serves: 4

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1-to-2-inch pieces
2 lemons, juiced
1/3 C olive oil
Kosher salt
Ground black pepper
4 metal or wooden skewers
Pesto (recipe below)

Note: if using wooden skewers, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes before using so they don’t burn on the grill.

Place the cut chicken pieces in a casserole dish. Squeeze the lemons over the chicken. Pour the olive oil over the chicken and give it all a mix. Cover and refrigerate up to four hours.

Take out of the refrigerator 30 minutes to one hour before cooking. You want the meat to come to room temperature, so it cooks evenly.

Preheat the grill to medium high. Season with avocado or olive oil. This will keep your food from sticking.

Place the chicken on the skewers. Seasoning liberally on all sides with kosher salt and ground black pepper.

Place on the skewers on the grill and cook for 6-7 minutes per side. The internal temperature should reach 175 degrees.

Take the skewers off the grill. Let them rest for 5 minutes. Serve with your homemade pesto. Enjoy!

Pesto Recipe

Makes: approx. 1 C

1 C fresh basil leaves, packed full
1 large clove garlic
½ C parmesan or pecorino Romano, grated
¼ C walnuts
Kosher salt
Extra virgin olive oil

Note: you can easily double or triple this recipe.

Put all ingredients except the olive oil plus a big pinch of kosher salt in the food processor and pulse approximately 10 times. While the processor is running, add your olive oil and stream until your desired consistency. I use approximately ½ C and add more when I prepare a dish. This can be kept in your refrigerator for 3-5 days.

Note: pesto freezes well. Place in a freezer safe container and add a layer of oil on top. This will last in your freezer up to three months.

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Hey, I’m Dr. Jay. Welcome to my kitchen. Today, I want to share with you a basil chicken. So delicious. We’re going to put on skewers. It’s going to go on our grill or in your indoor grill. It doesn’t matter. But I want to show you a couple things I like to do is I like to prep. So like on the weekends, I’ll get a bunch of chicken and then I’ll put it in little bags. And so this is my diced chicken. So I know this this is going to be great for a stir fry. It’s going to be great on the grill. Whatever you want to do. That’s 2 lbs. I’m going to put this in my little bowl here. This is a great way to get your chicken seasoned before we even get it on a grill or in a pan. I’ve got two lemons and I’m just going to juice them over the chicken. It’s super simple. You can even add a little garlic in here. You just don’t want to season it yet. You’re just going to put just your oil and your lemon. I’m going to wait to salt and pepper to right before I get it on my grill. Okay. So, just going over just some olive oil. I’m going to mix it all together. This could stay on your counter for up to an hour or you could put this like in the morning or a few hours. You don’t want to go too long cuz the acid in your lemons will actually start to cook. It’s kind of like ceviche, you know? It’ll give your chicken a different texture almost like um like a little rubbery texture. We don’t want that, right? So, I would say no more than a few hours, but really no more than four, but you can pack the flavor in. Really a half hour is fine. So, I’m going to be cooking this right away. So about a half hour or so. So I’m just going to actually put put this on. Put a little olive oil. And then I’m just going to let this sit with a little cover on my ka. That’s it. So a little olive oil. If you had some garlic pieces, you could smash that up and throw it in there as well. You could put some fresh herbs in there. All of that would be delicious. Just want to make sure everything’s coated. So sometimes it’s the little things we don’t think of, right, when we’re cooking. And and again, even if we’re doing this on a week night, it’s still easy. We come home, we get the chicken in a little lemon juice, a little olive oil while we’re getting everything else ready, and then the chicken’s just kind of waiting for us. Simple, right? Okay. Okay. Pesto is one of the simplest things to make and it’s so delicious. It packs a huge punch of flavor and it really is just a few ingredients. We’ve got some fresh basil here that I’ve actually washed and and um dried off. We are so fortunate here where we live. Um we live in this really gorgeous townhouse community and we have um people in our community that love to garden. Thank you Jesus for that and they do it for us. We have this gorgeous herb garden. We’ve got all kinds of basil and teragon and chives and thyme and all kinds of good stuff and we’re just able to go over there and use it. I’m so thankful. So anyways, got our basil. Have some garlic that’s going to go in. Usually pine nuts is kind of the traditional thing that’s made for pesto, but I love walnuts. Just raw organic walnuts. I love them. I think they add a I just like the flavor of them and they’re cheaper, so you know, works works for me. Some olive oil. And then the other thing is some Parmesan rea. So, I like to buy it in the block. You can absolutely buy it. They also sell it like in a tub pre-grated. That’s fine, too. I usually always have that on hand, too, just because we love our cheese in this house. But, I am going to grate it. It does make a little bit of a difference, a little bit stronger flavor, which hey, if we only have a few ingredients, the the better ingredients we use, the better our meal is going to be, right? So, just going to give this a grate. And this also keeps really well in your freezer. If you like happen to buy this, you find it on sale, you can just put it, you know, wrap it tightly and just keep it in a in a good freezer bag and it will last for a couple months easily. All right. And honestly, I’m going to give you the recipe. I’m going to give it, you know, in the description below here. But pesto is so simple. It’s actually kind of like ratios. If you have a one cup of like basil, it’d be a half a cup of h parmesan cheese, a/4 of a cup of of nuts, whatever kind that you choose to use, and then one clove of garlic. So, it kind of just goes in those increments. It just decreases by half each time. So, it’s really simple to remember. So, you can double the recipe, you can triple the recipe, and pesto freezes really, really well. Um, and I’ll show you I’ll show you how I pack that up at the end. All right, I’m just going to continue grating a little bit and then I’ll show you how simple this comes together. Okay, you’re going to see how quick this comes together. So, I’ve got I have four little cloves of garlic. This I’m making basically like a double recipe. So, I normally would just use two big ones, but I got four little ones going in. And I’m just going to start it just by buzzing this quickly. There we go. just to get the garlic kind of started a little bit. And oh, it’s fragrant already. It smells so good. Garlic makes everything better in my book. So, okay. Going to add I’ve got walnuts going in next. Like I said, you could use pine nuts. Pistachio would be delicious in here, too. So good. Okay. And all this fresh, beautiful basil. I love it. Smells so good. And I’ve got my cheese. going to go in next. And just a good pinch of salt. Okay, I’m not going to add any oil yet. Just going to get this get this going. So, pesto is absolutely a great weekn night meal, right? This comes together so quick. You could do this um on pasta would be delicious. Ravioli, tortoillini, shrimp. Oh my goodness, so good. So, it just kind of it’s very versatile. Right. So, now we’re just going to add the oil in. And I like to eyeball it. Um, kind of going to make it as saucy as you like it. All right. I want to show you something before we before I finish. I’m going to show you the consistency at this point where it’s still just barely coming together. This is what I would take it out if I was going to freeze it. I would take it out, put it in an airtight container. Then I would put a layer of olive oil over the top. What that does, it keeps it nice and green. It keeps that basil from oxidizing. So that’s how that’s how I would do it if you’re going to freeze it. But we’re going to use this tonight. So I’m just going to go back on Perfect. Okay, for me that’s perfect. Show you what it looks like. Oops. Okay. Look how beautiful that is. So green. So pretty. Let me get this out of here. I don’t want to waste any of this. Okay. But if you don’t have fresh fresh basil like in your backyard or in your community like we do, you can buy big packs of it in the store. Especially summertime. It’s usually very abundant in the grocery stores and it’s so nice to make this. Like I said, this comes together for a quick meal. If you have people come over that you weren’t expecting, you could even take this right out of your freezer. It defrosts in minutes and then you’ll have dinner on the table. I mean, quickly. Okay, look at me. I’m not wasting one drop of this. I wish you all could smell this. It’s so lovely. Look at that. Okay, so the pesto is ready for me. We’re going to get the chicken on the skewers and then we’re going to salt and pepper it, throw it on our grill, and we’re going to have dinner. Okay, so we got our grill all heated up. I’ve actually cleaned it all off. We’re going to get it oiled up in a minute, but first we’re going to get our our chicken skewers ready. So, I’ve got four skewers. I’m just going to put some olive oil over the top. We’re going to hit this with a good amount of salt and pepper. Don’t forget to season, right? We go through all this work and we want to make sure that we have really good taste in food. So, I find when you kind of season from up above, you get a little bit more coverage. And then we got a little electric grinder here. Lots of pepper. Okay. Going to give it a flip. I’m going to do the same thing. And then our grill is pretty much waiting for us. A little bit more oil. This way, too. Won’t stick to the grates. I am going to oil the grates as well, but uh this will just give us a little bit more security there. Okay. And again, a nice amount of salt. Okay. And I like using kosher salt. Sea salt would be fine, too, but I find kosher salt is great for everyday cooking. And some ground black pepper. This is going to be so tasty. And you saw how quick this all came together, right? All right, let’s go to the grill. Okay, so we got our grill all cleaned off. I just want to oil it. So, I just got a little paper towel and some avocado oil. Got to go on. And this actually just kind of helps to season your grill, too. So, it it keeps it nice and non-stick. Okay, just like that. Looks good. And then we’re going to get our skewers on. These are going to take about 12 minutes. Six between 12 to 14. About six to seven minutes per side. Okay. going on. And we’ll see you in about 6 minutes. [Music] This smells so good. I can’t wait to try it. Eric’s going to give it a try with me. Hey, another thing I want to tell you guys, we’re now doing live video on Sunday. We’d love you to join us 400 p.m. Central every Sunday. We get to chat. We get to learn a little bit about each other, what you like to cook and all of that. It’s cool, right? It is cool. We’ve been having a lot of fun. We’ve just had a couple so far, but it’s been really fun to get to know where you all live, what you all are cooking in on your weekends when you’re kind of prepping for the week and all of that. So, it’s been really a good time. Yeah. Doesn’t this smell amazing? Yeah. Right. And you guys saw how easy it was to make, right? You could also, you know, of course, you could buy your pesto in the store. You absolutely, there’s no shame to that. But you saw how quickly that came together. So good, right? It smells so good in here. And we marinated the chicken just for a little bit. Actually, about a half hour we did today. A little bit of lemon, a little bit of olive oil, and then we grilled for about 13 minutes total. All right. Is there any way you could um taste it? Yeah. Yeah. All right, let’s do it. I even cut you a little piece already. Oh, nice. Okay. Thought of everything. All right. I did. I’m going to dip a little bit in this pesto here. Yep. Okay. Me, too. All right. Can’t get enough of that. Okay. going in. Mhm. Oh yeah. So good. Mhm. That basil stuff. Mhm. It’s so good. You got me started on that. I never even had basil, I don’t think, until I met you. It’s so fresh. Like just something like four ingredients and just like gives you this big pop of flavor. This would be also good like on potatoes. Delicious. I mean, it’s really endless. And like I said, if you’re going to freeze this at this point, I’d put a layer of oil over the top. Make sure it’s, you know, covered. So, it’s something that go in the freezer and you’re good to go. But listen, we’re gonna go have dinner. We got a nice salad made to go with this. But we hope you enjoy these recipes. If you do, please share with your friends and family. If you have not subscribed yet, please do that as well. And don’t forget to click that bell so you get you get notified our next video. Ew. And watch our live 400 p.m. on Sunday central. will see that.