Your Homemade Chicken Shawarma Dreams Are Coming True.
Before we dive into this recipe for bringing the wonderful flavors of chicken shawarma home to your own kitchen, let’s just get this out of the way: if you’ve never had traditional shawarma stop reading this right now! Run to the nearest shawarma restaurant, and try it for yourself. Shawarma, in short, is an amazingly flavorful meat preparation—often lamb, but sometimes chicken—that originated in the Middle East. The meat is generously seasoned and then stacked in a cone-like shape on a continuously rotating vertical rotisserie. It’s a pretty magical, drool-worthy sight. Thin slices of the meat are then shaved off and laid onto a warm pillowy pita and topped with all the good stuff. We’re huge fans—so much so that we wanted to be able to eat it all the time! That means we had to create a recipe for making it at home—sans vertical rotisserie.
A Chicken Shawarma Recipe Shortcut
Truly nothing compares to traditional shawarma, but you’ve gotta have the right equipment and that is hard to come by my friend. Our shortcut to this traditional dish of chicken shawarma is to lace yogurt marinated chicken pieces and grill them up, the perfect dish for healthy summer grilling! Here’s how you make grilled chicken shawarma kebabs.
- Make a marinade by combining yogurt and spices.
- Toss marinade with chicken pieces.
- Thread the chicken onto your skewers.
- Grill up your chicken kebabs.
- Whip up the easy-peasy tahini sauce.
- Serve a simple salad of tomatoes and cucumber.
How To Season and Serve Chicken Shawarma
The marinade for this favorite grill recipe is lights out! Greek yogurt is seasoned with turmeric, cinnamon, cumin, and cardamom to create a flavor packed marinade for chicken thighs. After marinating for a couple of hours (or as little as 20 minutes if that’s all you have) the chicken is then skewered (or not) and ready for the grill (or oven). Once grilled, we serve it alongside a bowl of garlicky tahini sauce, cucumbers, tomatoes, Jeweled Rice, pita, feta, and of course Classic Creamy Hummus for a truly delectable Mediterranean inspired feast perfect for summer cookouts.
Tools You Will Need.
More Shawarma to Enjoy at Home
Chicken Shawarma Obsession
Do you have a new (or old) found love for homemade shawarma? It’s easy to make and we hope you’ll agree! If you whip this grilled chicken shawarma kebab recipe up we want to see it. Be sure to tag @themodernproper or #themodernproper on Instagram so we can see your handy work.