Proper chicken shawarma

You can’t cook a decent chicken shawarma at home in an oven, right? Right??

You can and it’s delicious. This amazing street-food kebab is something you’ll look forward to cooking any night of the week, any time of year. The prep is incredibly easy and you can serve it however you like... in a pita, a wrap, with salad, tahini dressing, lemon, hummus, rocket, over rice, stuffed into a jacket potato…

You won’t be disappointed.

Serves: 4

Prep time: 5 minutes

Marinating time: At least 1 hour

Cook time: 45 minutes

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Ingredients

1kg chicken thighs

Juice of 2 lemons

8 tbspns olive oil

6 cloves of garlic (crushed and chopped)

2 tspns ground cumin

2 tspns smoked paprika

2 tspns ground black pepper

1 tspn salt

½ tspn ground turmeric

Pinch of cinnamon

Pinch of red pepper flakes

1 red onion (peeled and quartered)

Method

In a large bowl, make the marinade by mixing together all the ingredients other than the chicken and the onion. Make sure it’s well combined. Add the chicken, covering and coating all of it with the marinade. Get your hands in, get messy, get it all over the chicken. Remember to wash your hands straight after handling the meat. Cover and seal with some cling film and leave the bowl in the fridge for at least an hour. Take it out the fridge half an hour before cooking to bring it to room temperature.

Turn the oven on to 200’c. Add the onion to the bowl of chicken and toss to coat. Pour the chicken, onion and marinade into a suitable baking or roasting dish, making sure everything is evenly spread and pop it into the oven for around 35 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave it to cool for a minute or two. Remove the thighs, leaving the marinade in the dish and chop or tear the chicken into bits and slithers depending on how you like your kebab meat. Turn the oven grill on high. Place the torn meat back into the juices in the baking dish, mix it all up and pop under the grill for 5 minutes, keeping an eye on it, until the chicken starts to crisp and char.

Serve in wraps with Israeli salad, tahini dressing, parsley, pomegranate and something pickly.

TIPS

  • Marinade the chicken during the day if you can. Then in the evening, all you have to do is pop it in the oven and think about what you’re serving it with.

  • If you like it HOT, just add more chilli flakes to the marinade to taste.