Let’s talk about Russian skewers. A few years ago, I found myself learning to cook barbecue by the Volga River at a dacha in Russia with my father-in-law. He had these substantial stainless steel Russian skewers – nothing like the flimsy rubbish you normally find in the UK that look like knitting needles. You know the type: you load your meat on, try to turn it, and everything just spins uselessly. Complete waste of time.
The Russian ones were different. Proper flat blade design, heavy gauge stainless steel, and when you loaded them up with meat, they didn’t sag in the middle like a banana. My father-in-law cooked shashlik the way Russians have been doing it for generations – meat marinated overnight in yoghurt and onions, threaded onto these skewers, then rested across the barbecue rather than laid on the grill. The result was revelation: perfectly cooked meat, no sticking, no charring, no burning in the middle while the ends stayed raw.
I wanted to recreate this at home on my 54cm Weber. So the next day we went down to the market where guys were selling skewers. I bought a few different types and brought them all back to England. I tried cooking with each of them over the following months, and there was one particular set that I kept coming back to. These were the ones.
Tracking Down the Source
The next time my wife Olga went back to Russia, I sent her on a mission: “Find the factory that makes these. Go and speak to the bloke on the market, find out who his supplier is, trace it back to the source.” And that’s exactly what she did. We found the factory, placed an order for 3,000 sets, and started selling them about ten years ago on one of our other sites.
Since then, we’ve seen all kinds of sellers on Amazon jump on the bandwagon, calling their skewers “Russian skewers” when they’re nothing of the sort. They’re rhodium-coated mild steel from China that’ll rust within a season. Nobody else is importing genuine Russian skewers to the UK. We are.
What Makes Russian Skewers Different
These are catering-grade stainless steel – 70cm long, 1cm wide, 3mm thick. The flat blade length is 55cm, which makes them perfect for 54cm round Webers, Napoleons, and similar barbecues. They also work brilliantly on box barbecues and fire pits.
The flat blade design matters. It means your meat doesn’t spin when you try to turn it. The twists near the handle allow you to position the skewer exactly where you want it over the coals – if you’re a perfectionist, you can even cut a small slot into the edge of your barbecue with a grinder so the twist sits perfectly and you can rotate the skewer with precision.
The 3mm thickness means two things: they don’t bend under load, and the metal heats through, cooking your meat from the inside as well as the outside. Faster cooking, juicier results, even doneness from end to end.
The Russian Method
In Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics, barbecue isn’t a summer hobby – it’s a serious cultural tradition. They’ve been perfecting shashlik for generations whilst we were still burning sausages on disposable foil trays.
The method is simple but effective: you rest the skewers across your barbecue rather than laying them on the grill. This gives you better control over the cooking, keeps the meat off surfaces it might stick to, and reduces charring. You can position the skewers closer or further from the heat source, depending on what you’re cooking. Once you’ve cooked this way, you won’t go back.
These skewers are built for this method. Load them up with marinated chicken, lamb, beef, pork – even koubideh (minced meat kebabs). The skewers won’t sag, the meat won’t spin, and everything cooks evenly.
Why We Source Them
I’ve tried skewers from Sweden, Estonia, all over Scandinavia, where they’re equally enthusiastic about outdoor cooking. I’ve bought fish grills, marinades, brushes, and all kinds of barbecue equipment from across Europe. But most of the skewers I could find were Chinese rubbish that bent like bananas under load.
When I saw the real Russian skewers in action, I thought: these are what skewers should be. We didn’t source these to hit a price point or compete with anyone else. We sourced them because they’re the best flat-blade skewers you can get, and they’ll last you decades.
The factory suggested making them thinner and cheaper when we first approached them. We said no. The whole point is to make something that people who know about barbecue will look at and recognise as the real thing.
Our video below shows you the product and tells you the full story.
Recognition of our Russian Skewers
These skewers have been recommended by Marcus Bawdon, editor of UK BBQ Magazine and author of Skewered and Food and Fire. They’ve also been reviewed and highly recommended by Kung Fu Barbecue, Love2BBQ, and Grilling24X7 (all big sites and channels) – all recognising them as the real McCoy.
Buy Russian Skewers Direct
When you buy from us, you’re buying direct from the UK supplier. These come straight from the Russian factory to us, to you. You’ll find one company we authorised to sell these on Amazon, but you’ll pay more there. We’re not a standard retailer – we’re the importer.
These are the skewers we use ourselves. They’re the ones Olga’s family uses at their dacha in Russia. They’re what shashlik restaurants across the former Soviet Union use. And now they’re available in the UK, shipped from our stock with Royal Mail Tracked 48.
They’ll outlast you. Click the button below to find them in our shop.
