Chicken Shawarma is a favorite Middle Eastern dish of ours. Though we didn’t have a cone of meat to make our shawarmas, we did try to bring as much of the flavor into the chicken as possible. This dish will have you and your family wanting more, so you might want to double up the recipe. Enjoy it with the spicy sauce as well to kick it up a notch!
Chicken Shawarma
Ingredients
Chicken Seasoning
- 2 chicken breasts
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp onion powder
- 1½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp basil paste
- ¼ tsp whole cloves chrushed up finely
- ½ tsp ground tumeric
- ½ tsp paprika
- 2 tbsp avocado oil
Spicy Chili Sauce
- 2 tsp basil paste
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp chili powder
- ½ tsp paprika
- 1 lemon
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1-2 habenero peppers
- 2 tsp avocado oil
Pita Filler
- spinach
- cucumber
- red onion
- tzatziki
- pita
Instructions
Spicy Sauce
- Grill red bell pepper and deseeded habaneros. We did 2 habeneros because we like it spicy, but if you aren't a huge fan of spice then I would only recommend 1.
- After peppers have been on the grill for a minute, add a bit of salt to them and keep them on the grill for 3-4 minutes
- Add all ingredients into blender and blend into a sauce
Chicken
- Mix all ingredients together into a paste (avocado oil included)
- Once mixed, coat chicken with the paste until covered
- Add chicken to grill and cook for 3-4 minutes both sides or until chickens internal temp reaches 165°
Pita
- Pack your pita with spinach, chopped red onion, tzatziki, cucumber, and chicken
- Top with Spicy Sauce and enjoy!
Shawarma is a Middle Eastern dish traditionally made with lamb or mutton, but now a days its made with additionally beef, chicken, turkey, or veal. Normally its also made on a vertical rotisserie packed with meat. You stack the meat on top of each other so that the fat drips down and the flavor is compounded. If you’ve never seen a meat tornado, you’ve got to find a place to see it. You’ll most likely smell the delicious aroma before you ever see it though.
If you’ve never had a chicken shawarma don’t worry, you’re not alone. If you’ve ever seen the first avengers, they made them famous by talking about them at the end of the movie and eating them in a busted up restaurant. My first introduction to a shawarma was a restaurant in Memphis. Casablanca is a delicious Mediterranean restaurant that’s food is worth the trip. My recipe for spicy chili sauce doesn’t do their sauce justice, but I gave it my best shot.
Typically you would also have shawarma with a spicy red sauce and a garlic sauce called toum. I didn’t end up making it in this recipe, but I’ll be sure to post a recipe for toum in our next version of this. You would blend the spicy sauce and toum together to make an amazing topping for any sandwich. For our chicken shawarma recipe, we added our tzatziki sauce on top.
Val and I have been pushing ourselves to make more and more recipes that we haven’t ever tried to make. If there are ever any recipes you’d like us to try and make, please contact us and let us know. We are going to continue to push ourselves in creating more adventurous recipes. Val and I find that pushing ourselves to make different recipes is the only way to grow. If you stay stagnant and never try to push yourself, you’ll plateau and that’s when you become comfortable in cooking. Being comfortable isn’t a bad thing, but its not how you get better.
Welp that’s it for our chicken shawarma recipe. As always, we hope you enjoy this recipe and from our kitchen to yours, cheers!
