Make room for chicken shawarma in your healthy lineup
More than thirty years ago when I worked and lived on Chicago's near Northside I was fortunate to be near not one, but two terrific restaurants serving gyro's (the Athenium Room on Webster, which is still there, the other, around North and Clybourn, is gone).
Even when a great gyro sandwich dripped Tzatziki sauce and meat juice in my lap it brought a big smile to my face. Yes, I smiled even if later my slacks needed to spend time in the washer.
The closest I came to making gyro meat at home was a lamb-based meatloaf seasoned with Gyro spices served thinly-sliced with a side of homemade Tzatziki sauce and chopped onions stuffed into an oven-warmed pita. Close in flavor, but dripped on my kitchen counter; not my slacks.
Later, when I wandered off the Mediterranean path and into the Middle East, I discovered what became a second fill-a-pita favorite: chicken shawarma. Chicken shawarma is a very close relative to gyro's, where overlapping pieces of marinated chicken are roasted on a vertical rotisserie and, when cooked, is sliced-off onto pita bread.
There's no way that I can make chicken shawarma like the pros do. No.
Yes, there are vertical rotisseries for the home kitchen; with prices starting at $100 plus. No thanks.
My homemade shawarma method? Following Sam Sifton's (New York Times' Food Editor) process of oven-roasting, shawarma-seasoned marinated chicken thighs.
My first attempt at making oven-roasted chicken shawarma was for a dinner group to which we belong; figuring the feedback from those moderately sophisticated diners could help test Sifton's recipe.
I made Sifton's shawarma as written but quickly learned the roasting time of 30 to 40 minutes over-baked my chicken thighs, losing some of the marinade's value.
For a group served buffet-style, I set my shawarma test up by slicing the chicken thighs and leaving them in the juices in which they were roasted. I laid out pita rounds, Kalamata olives, thin-sliced English cucumber, chopped fresh tomato and some Tzatziki sauce.
At dinner's end there was no shawarma left; just a puddle of marinade. Positive flavor-note feedback was strong. There were two criticisms, though: too much lemon and not enough salt.
The next time I made a pan of roasted chicken shawarma I cut the lemon juice in half and increased the salt by 50-percent.
This time, I also reduced the roasting time to 25 minutes so that the chicken thighs were just done; using my instant-read digital thermometer to check that they were 160 degrees at the thickest part. Letting them rest out of the oven for five minutes elevated that temperature to a perfect 165 degrees.
We had some of those whole chicken thighs for dinner with white rice and some of the marinade/cooking liquid drizzled over both. Fantastic.
Thanks Sam for starting me along the road to a terrific homemade Shawarma.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.