How to make the perfect chicken shawarma – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to Make the Perfect…

Shawarma, an Arabic word said to come from the Turkish çervirmek, meaning to turn or roast on a spit, is the Levantine cousin of Greek gyros and Turkish döner: skewers of sliced or ground meat, turned in front of a vertical grill, and slowly cooked in their delicious fat until they are sliced on your plate. It's no surprise that such a clever idea has spread so widely, but each version has its own distinct character, and shawarma, found from Egypt to Iraq, is quite different from gyros. with herbs or a more lightly spiced onion döner - and different again in all the countries where it is popular. What binds them all, however, is the difficulty of recreating this much-loved street food at home, if one does not live near professionals and, inexplicably, also lacks a rotating meter-long skewer long in front of a four-burner gas grill in his own kitchen. Luckily, I've discovered that it is indeed possible to get great results without investing in one or the other.
Chicken
Although shawarma is also made from For lamb, beef and turkey, I stuck with chicken, as there seemed more than enough possibilities to explore with that alone, although the same technique could be adapted for other meats. Most recipes call for chicken thigh, with only Joudie Kalla (who writes in her book Baladi, "Who doesn't love shawarma? It's a staple of Palestine...I love it - as long as it's done right") using the chest instead. My testers and I all agree that, as tender as it is, it's also a bit dry compared to the thigh; That said, the fatty chicken skin from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's recipe on Ottolenghi's website doesn't have a lot of fans here either. Although we like the crispy chicken skin, it's still a bit chewy here, and the thighs seem to have enough fat to keep them basted for the relatively short cooking time.
The spices and marinade
Yasmin Khan Zaitoun's book and Michael Solomonov's Israeli soul are responsible for the two simplest marinades I find: the first uses only (!) lemon juice and zest, garlic, turmeric, allspice, cumin, olive oil and pepper, while the latter avoids lemon and garlic, but...

Recipe Aug 17, 2022 0 65 Add to Reading List

Shawarma, an Arabic word said to come from the Turkish çervirmek, meaning to turn or roast on a spit, is the Levantine cousin of Greek gyros and Turkish döner: skewers of sliced or ground meat, turned in front of a vertical grill, and slowly cooked in their delicious fat until they are sliced on your plate. It's no surprise that such a clever idea has spread so widely, but each version has its own distinct character, and shawarma, found from Egypt to Iraq, is quite different from gyros. with herbs or a more lightly spiced onion döner - and different again in all the countries where it is popular. What binds them all, however, is the difficulty of recreating this much-loved street food at home, if one does not live near professionals and, inexplicably, also lacks a rotating meter-long skewer long in front of a four-burner gas grill in his own kitchen. Luckily, I've discovered that it is indeed possible to get great results without investing in one or the other.

Chicken

Although shawarma is also made from For lamb, beef and turkey, I stuck with chicken, as there seemed more than enough possibilities to explore with that alone, although the same technique could be adapted for other meats. Most recipes call for chicken thigh, with only Joudie Kalla (who writes in her book Baladi, "Who doesn't love shawarma? It's a staple of Palestine...I love it - as long as it's done right") using the chest instead. My testers and I all agree that, as tender as it is, it's also a bit dry compared to the thigh; That said, the fatty chicken skin from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's recipe on Ottolenghi's website doesn't have a lot of fans here either. Although we like the crispy chicken skin, it's still a bit chewy here, and the thighs seem to have enough fat to keep them basted for the relatively short cooking time.

The spices and marinade

Yasmin Khan Zaitoun's book and Michael Solomonov's Israeli soul are responsible for the two simplest marinades I find: the first uses only (!) lemon juice and zest, garlic, turmeric, allspice, cumin, olive oil and pepper, while the latter avoids lemon and garlic, but...