Chicken Shawarma Recipe | How to Make Shawarma With Sauce | Village Food Secrets | Mubashir Saddique || SRY foods

This Chicken Shawarma recipe is going to knock your socks off! Just a handful of every day spices makes an incredible Chicken Shawarma marinade that infuses the chicken with exotic Middle Eastern flavors. The smell when this is cooking is insane!

This is one of my signature recipes that will be very familiar to all my friends because I make this so often. It’s off the charts for effort vs output: just a handful of everyday spices, garlic, a splash of lemon and olive oil transforms into the most incredible flavor. When this chicken is cooking, the smell is incredible. In fact, it’s how I met most of my neighbors when I lived in a townhouse complex, random people I had never met before popping their head over the fence wanting to know what on earth I was making. They were elated when I handed out samples!

hicken Shawarma Recipe | How to Make Shawarma With Sauce

What is Chicken Shawarma, actually??

Shawarma is a popular dish originating from the Middle East. It’s a popular street food that is traditionally made in the form of spiced meats that are stacked on a vertical rotisserie with thin slices shaved off as it rotates. But don’t worry! We can cook our horizontally in a good old pan or on the BBQ! Shawarma was traditionally made with lamb, mutton and chicken though these days you see it with beef too. It’s commonly served in the form of a wrap, though in some countries you see it served on plates with sides such as seasoned rice or fries, and salads. In this recipe, I’m giving you both options!

Ingredients in Chicken Shawarma Here’s what you need to make Chicken Shawarma. I’m betting you have most if not all of the spices in your pantry already!

Ingredients in Chicken Shawarma

Hicken – I like to make Shawarma with boneless, skinless thighs as its juicier than breast. But chicken breast and tenderloin both work great.
Lemon juice – Fresh!
Olive oil – For a touch of flavor but also to dilute the lemon juice so it doesn’t “cook” the chicken (like we intentionally do with ceviche!).
Spices – Nothing out of the ordinary here! The only one you might not have in stock is cardamom, though these days its easily found at any grocery store. It has a piney, sort of citrusy flavor and it is a key ingredient that distinguishes the Shawarma marinade from other cuisines, such as Mexican, that regularly uses the other spices used in this recipe. In short, don’t skip it!
Spice control – The spiciness in the Shawarma marinade comes from the cayenne pepper. It’s not a key element of the flavor so if you don’t want it spicy, either reduce or eliminate it altogether. I promise you won’t feel robbed. Lots of other flavor's going on in this dish!

SAUCE OPTIONS FOR SHAWARMA

Shawarma is traditionally served with either a tahini sauce (common in Israel) or a Yogurt Sauce. If you’d like to use a tahini sauce, use the one in this Roasted Broccolini recipe.

For a Lemon Yogurt Sauce, here’s what you need:

SAUCE OPTIONS FOR SHAWARMA sr foods by shahid iqbal ch

How to make Chicken Shawarma

For the best results, it’s best to marinate the chicken overnight. But to be honest, the volume and flavor of the marinade is intense enough that you can get away with a minimum of 3 hours of marinating. Been there, done that plenty of times, and nobody has complained!

1. Mix marinade – For convenience, just mix the marinade directly in a zip lock bag. A bag works best because the chicken remains nicely coated in the marinade. If you prefer to use a container, either turn the chicken a few times or increase the marinade by 50%.

2. Add chicken into the marinade. Seal the bag, removing excess air, and then massage to coat from the outside. Leave to marinade for 12 to 24 hours in the fridge. If you’re pressed for time, even 3 hours will do!

3. Yogurt sauce – Make the yogurt sauce simply by mixing the ingredients then set aside for at least 20 minutes to let the flavor’s meld. This will keep for 3 days in the fridge.

4. Cook chicken either on the stove or on the BBQ. It will get a great crust on it from the spices, and you will adore the smell. It’s intoxicating!

5. Rest chicken for at least 3 minutes before serving to allow the juices to redistribute throughout the flesh, else they will just run out everywhere when you slice the meat.

6. To serve, just pile everything on a platter and let everybody make their own wraps! The chicken, lettuce, tomato slices, onion, yogurt sauce and warmed flatbreads – homemade or store bought. If the chicken is on the larger side, I sometimes slice it. But if they are smaller, I tend to just leave them whole.

How to Serve Chicken Shawarma

There are two main ways to serve Chicken Shawarma.

1. Wraps – As Chicken Shawarma wraps (like Gyros and Doner kebabs), with tomato, lettuce, and a simple yoghurt sauce on the side. Other optional extras include: red onion, cheese (query authenticity? But that’s ok!!), hummus, hot sauce / chili sauce.

2. Shawarma plate – With rice and salads on the side. Thought I usually do serve pita bread or another type of flatbread as well, with a big dollop of either Hummus or the Yogurt Sauce in this recipe, just because it’s very on theme.

Below, the Chicken Shawarma is pictured with Mejadra which is a Middle Eastern lentil rice (seriously so good you can / will want to eat it just by itself!) and a Middle Eastern Chickpea Salad (I skip the spicing of chickpeas otherwise there’s just too much kapow spices going on).

A few other things that would be very much at home alongside Chicken Shawarma:

· Lemon Rice Pilaf

· Rice Pilaf with Nuts and Dried Fruit

· Chickpea Rice Pilaf

· Juicy Greek Salad – the flavor's in Greek salad pair really well with Middle Eastern food

· Middle Eastern Shredded Cabbage, Carrot, Mint Salad

· Middle Eastern Roasted Vegetables with Tahini Drizzle

· Roasted Pumpkin with Yogurt Sauce and Pine Nuts

· Roasted Broccoli with Tahini Sauce

The spread below features the Chickpea Salad referred to above and Mejadra, the lentil spiced rice.

Great food for gatherings

This Chicken Shawarma, along with the Vietnamese Noodles withLemongrass Chicken, are two of my most frequently made foods when I’m cooking for a crowd because it’s easy to make loads, they are both great “lay it all out and let everyone serve themselves” type foods (I’m a big fan of food like that), and it travels well. I’ve made this multiple times on camping trips (along with the Vietnamese Noodles and Greek Gyros!).

It was also part of a 7 course ArabianFeast menu that I shared way back when I first published this recipe in 2015. I still haven’t gotten around to perking up all the recipes with fresh new photos, but I will one day! I love that menu because so much of it can be prepared ahead, and there’s lots of common ingredients.

Be prepared for the amazing smells when you’re cooking this Chicken Shawarma! – Nagi xx