Chicken Shawarma
- 12 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- ¼ cup white wine vinegar
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 cup plain yogurt
- 8 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoons salt or to taste
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon ginger powder
- ½ teaspoon allspice
- ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg powder
- Salt and pepper to taste
Garlic Sauce
- ¼ cup plain yoghurt
- ¼ cup mayonnaise
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp dried mint
Lebanese Rice
- ½ cup vermicelli, broken into small pieces (or orzo)
- 1 ½ cup white long grain rice
- ½ onion, finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 750 ml stock, strained
- Salt
Fixin’s
- Pitta bread
- Cucumber
- Tomato
- Red onion
- Lettuce
- Pickled green chillies
Cooking
I cooked the chicken on a kamado grill with a heat deflector over one half of the fire. This allowed for indirect heat roasting, and also direct heat grilling on the other half. You can achieve something similar on a regular barbecue by piling all your coals up on one side of the grill so you have a direct, fierce heat section, and an indirect section of the grill.
If you don’t have a barbecue at all, you could roast the chicken in an oven then finish under the grill / broiler.
- Make up the marinade, add the chicken, and leave it to do its magic overnight.
- Tightly pack the marinaded chicken thighs onto a skewer.
- Roast until the internal temperature is ~ 65c / 150f.
- While the chicken is roasting, make the garlic sauce, and chop and de-seed the cucumber and tomatoes, slice the red onion and lettuce. Optionally season the salad vegetables (I used a restrained drizzle of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice, salt and pepper).
- Wash the rice.
- Add some oil to a pan and fry the vermicelli until deep, golden brown.
- Remove the vermicelli and reserve.
- Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft, then add the vermicelli, the rice, and the stock.
- Bring to a simmer, cover, and leave for 10 minutes.
- Check the liquid – it should all have been absorbed. Put a sheet of kitchen towel over the pan, replace the lid on top, take off the heat. Keep the rice warm in an oven at 100’c.
- Once the chicken has reached about 65c / 150f move it to direct heat and turn regularly to get some nice colour on the outside.
- Pull the chicken thighs off the skewer and spread out over your grill for a couple of minutes a side – this will just make sure there’s no wet marinade left and will give a little more texture to the chicken.
- Put the chicken thighs on a plate, tent with foil, and rest for 10 minutes.
- While the chicken is resting make a shallow cut in one side of each of your pitta breads and toast them on the grill for a minute or two each side. This should help create the pocket.
- Chop the chicken into strips.
- Put some of the salad veggies in a pitta bread, add some chicken, dollop over some of the garlic sauce (and optionally some chilli sauce) and scoff.
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