Name: Kefir-marinated pork skewers
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 290 min
Ingredients: 1 kg boneless pork shoulder (Choose a whole piece with evenly distributed marbling.); 300 ml plain milk kefir (Unsweetened.); 2 onions; 1½ tsp salt; ¼ tsp ground black pepper

By Nik, founder of 東歐嚴選｜kefir.link and former chef · Updated 2 November 2026

Shashlik is Russia's skewered meat, the smell of summer picnics, and this version brings it indoors. Chunks of pork shoulder soak in milk kefir with plenty of onion, then roast hot on a rack in the oven. Kefir is a classic Russian shashlik marinade, and with salt and onion it keeps the pork soft and juicy.

Prep time10 min

Total time4 h 50 min

Makes6 servings

Jump to the recipe ↓

Spit-roast meat with a Turkic name

Russians roasted meat on spits long before anyone called it shashlik. The name comes from shish, a Turkic word for skewer, and it entered Russian in the nineteenth century through contact with the Caucasus. Today shashlik means summer: bonfires, river banks and evenings with friends. In the Saratov region, the May holidays traditionally open the season of picnics, dacha work and shashlik. Without a grill, you can roast the skewered pork on a rack in a hot oven and serve them with a vegetable salad, just as you would outdoors.

What the kefir, onion and oven each do

Kneading the pork with onion, salt and pepper before the kefir goes in makes the onion release its juice into the marinade. Kefir's mild acid softens the surface of the meat, but too long a soak can turn that outer layer mushy. Salt does the deeper work, opening gaps in the muscle protein so the meat holds water.

In the oven, size and spacing matter. Pieces that are too small dry out and pieces that are too large stay underdone in the middle, so even cubes cook at the same pace. Gaps between the pieces and a rack over a tray let the heat reach every side. In Taiwan, pork shoulder is sold whole at traditional markets, which makes even cubes easy to cut.

Lavash, pomegranate and other marinades

Serve the skewers with a fresh vegetable salad, or lay them on Armenian lavash, a thin flatbread, and scatter pomegranate seeds over the top. For a different marinade, blend garlic with parsley, or add garlic, sweet paprika and dried basil. Keep the spices restrained, because too many easily drown the taste of the pork.