Shawarma-Inspired Grilled Chicken

A couple months ago, I shared a dinner party video of me making homemade pitas, falafel, lots of sides, and a pistachio date bark. The dinner was magnificent, and it got so much love on the internet. I knew I wanted to duplicate the success of that meal but swap out the main for a dish I love equally: chicken shawarma.

The issue about shawarma at home is that I would have to assume most people don’t own a vertically rotating spit upon which you could roast maybe a hundred pounds of chicken until beautifully roasted, golden, and beautiful. The easiest work around: the grill.

I’ve made chicken shawarma on the grill before, usually in kebob form. As a kebob, you can sort of emulate the traditional shawarma: the meat towards the middle of the skewer stays succulent, the meat on the exterior gets charred and crispy. But sometimes you feel lazy, and sometimes you don’t own skewers (me for some reason). And maybe if you have 6 people over you don’t really want to skewer all those kebobs on a weekday Tuesday night.

So I thought, let’s just marinate chicken in those same spices. Keep it simple. Serve the chicken with some immaculate fresh pita and call it a night. It was the right call. The chicken only requires about 20 minutes of active time, which means I can focus a lot more on the sides (isn’t that all that matters, anyway?).

To go with, I made dill pickles. I heated a little olive oil with za’atar to make an infused oil, spooned that on top of store-bought labneh. I made a quick green tahini by processing tahini, lemon juice, water, garlic, parsley, and chives with an immersion blender. Of course, I also made a jalapeño-cabbage slaw and a tamarind tomato cucumber salad. So maybe I did get carried away with the sides now that I’m typing this out…

I actually had the joy of cooking this dinner with my cousin/marketing intern Lily who is visiting me in New York for the week. I always love cooking with a sous chef. Someone who I can work back-to-back with as we execute the meal together. It also made me realize I might need a cooking assistant ;)

AND THE DESSERT. How could we neglect. My friend Molly is obsessed with Briermere farm on Long Island. She actually loves their peach pie the most and has requested it from me several times (maybe one day). But I was most drawn to the raspberry cream pie. A thick layer of cream, crowned with a red tiara of freshly stewed summer raspberries, wrapped in a classically flaky pie crust. It was impeccable. I decided to keep the raspberry jam as fresh as possible: no corn starch, no gelatin. Just using the natural pectin in the fruit to thicken the sauce. Just make sure you cook the jam long enough or it won’t set. Testing it on a cold plate is an easy way to check.

For the love of fresh pita,

Ryan