Cooking With Fire

Chicken Shawarma

• 12 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup white wine vinegar
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoons salt or to taste
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ginger powder
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg powder
• Salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Sauce

• ¼ cup plain yoghurt
• ¼ cup mayonnaise
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp dried mint

Lebanese Rice

• ½ cup vermicelli, broken into small pieces (or orzo)
• 1 ½ cup white long grain rice
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 750 ml stock, strained
• Salt

Fixin’s

• Pitta bread
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Red onion
• Lettuce
• Pickled green chillies

Cooking

I cooked the chicken on a kamado grill with a heat deflector over one half of the fire. This allowed for indirect heat roasting, and also direct heat grilling on the other half. You can achieve something similar on a regular barbecue by piling all your coals up on one side of the grill so you have a direct, fierce heat section, and an indirect section of the grill.

If you don’t have a barbecue at all, you could roast the chicken in an oven then finish under the grill / broiler.

1. Make up the marinade, add the chicken, and leave it to do its magic overnight.
2. Tightly pack the marinaded chicken thighs onto a skewer.
3. Roast until the internal temperature is ~ 65c / 150f.
4. While the chicken is roasting, make the garlic sauce, and chop and de-seed the cucumber and tomatoes, slice the red onion and lettuce. Optionally season the salad vegetables (I used a restrained drizzle of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice, salt and pepper).
5. Wash the rice.
6. Add some oil to a pan and fry the vermicelli until deep, golden brown.
7. Remove the vermicelli and reserve.
8. Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft, then add the vermicelli, the rice, and the stock.
9. Bring to a simmer, cover, and leave for 10 minutes.
10. Check the liquid – it should all have been absorbed. Put a sheet of kitchen towel over the pan, replace the lid on top, take off the heat. Keep the rice warm in an oven at 100’c.
11. Once the chicken has reached about 65c / 150f move it to direct heat and turn regularly to get some nice colour on the outside.
12. Pull the chicken thighs off the skewer and spread out over your grill for a couple of minutes a side – this will just make sure there’s no wet marinade left and will give a little more texture to the chicken.
13. Put the chicken thighs on a plate, tent with foil, and rest for 10 minutes.
14. While the chicken is resting make a shallow cut in one side of each of your pitta breads and toast them on the grill for a minute or two each side. This should help create the pocket.
15. Chop the chicken into strips.

16. Put some of the salad veggies in a pitta bread, add some chicken, dollop over some of the garlic sauce (and optionally some chilli sauce) and scoff.