Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Chicken Shawarma. Diversify Yo’ Menu!

Hello everyone! Or Herkese Merhaba! as the gentle folks in Turkey may say.

I felt I needed to add a little clarification here since I’ve definitely taken better banner photos than this one, yet I still wanted to show the plate that encompasses the entirety of my most recent undertaking.

Here are a couple of stock photos that can better show what I’m doing here.

Photo courtesy of barbecuebible.com

Holy fucking shit would you look at that glorious motherfucker!

Oh, here’s another.

photo courtesy of youtube.com

Goddamn right folks. We’re making us some chicken shawarma! Or I guess we can call it “shawarma” since it’s actually grilled chicken with shawarma spices. I also made a few tasty accompaniments to go along with it that maybe you will notice in my otherwise pretty crappy photo up there.

Most of you fine, genteel folks are probably pretty familiar with this dish since you obviously have advanced tastes in cuisine based on the fact that you read this instructive and expansive culinary handbook on a weekly basis.

I thank you for that.

There may be a few out there who are maybe confused or possibly even frightened by this odd sounding dish.

Well it’s time to broaden your food horizons and also time to broaden some narrow-ass world views. This shit is fucking delicious!

Fun story time.

As many of you are aware the Sunday Gravy recipe you read each week was actually prepared the week before. I tried doing it all on the same weekend and that shit is goddamn ridiculous.

Anyway! One of my rituals is taking the photos that you see in these posts, selecting the best one and posting it to Facebook for all of the “Oohs” and “That looks delicious” comments I get. It’s true, I am a shameless attention whore. Guilty as charged. So I posted the banner image last week to a ton of positive responses and one “Im not so sure about this meal”(sp) response.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who maybe tracked down an old girlfriend on Facebook that I still had phantom feelings for – first true love fucks with you that way – only to find out that the girl in question turned into a major methhead, actually served jail time, lost most of their teeth and aged as if they were living on the fucking planet Mercury instead of the Earth.

It’s an age-old story that happens to most of us.

You guessed it. That was her with the “Im not so sure about this meal” response. She hardly ever comments on my Facebook feed at all and to be honest after speaking with her one time I NEVER interact with her tainted ass. So the one comment in years is showing her narrow goddamn food vision and dropping criticism on a perfectly delicious meal based on the name.

Jesus, I dodged a goddamn bullet getting dumped by that one back in the early 80’s.

Shawarma is insanely delicious food, get the fuck over it’s name and country of origin fer Chrissake! Am I allowed to say “Jesus” and “fer Chrissake” on Easter?

Too goddamn late!

Shawarma is tasty seasoned grilled meat who’s origins can be traced back to The Ottoman Empire in Turkey in the middle 1800’s. It’s based on grilled meat skewers. Who doesn’t love a delicious meat skewer? It can be made as a simple skewer but the traditional version is meat that has been layered on a spit and alternated with layers of fat and stacked high only to be slowly roasted rotisserie style by a slow, gradual turning.

Look at this again for the general gist.

While I would just fucking LOVE being able to do that it would require a lot of goddamn meat, a lot of goddamn roasting – sometimes up to a day – and one of these motherfuckers here:

I would indeed love to own this beauty but A) that fucker is $1,200 bucks, 2) I don’t have the counter space for that and bee) that shit would not be recommended for a kitchen in a townhouse style condo.

We’re going to just marinate some chicken with the proper spices, fire up my charcoal grill, make the proper accoutrements and serve this shit up proper.

Let’s do this shit!

Original recipe idea plus a big tip of the cap to Epicurious.com for this one. 

Chicken Shawarma, yogurt tahini sauce, homemade hummus and garlic sauce.

Woo-hoo!

Shawarma first.

Grab a couple 2-3 pounds of boneless chicken breasts or thighs.

1 1/2 teaspoons freshly toasted and ground cumin seeds – of course! You can use ground cumin too.

1 teaspoon of coriander.

1 teaspoon of paprika.

1 1/2 teaspoons of cayenne. Just do it dammit!

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

5 or so tablespoons of olive oil.

1 1/2 tablespoons of salt.

2 teaspoons of ground black pepper.

As you may remember I usually use chicken breasts that I have cut in half for easier grilling placement and doneness. Put that halved chicken into a 1 gallon ziptop freezer bag.

Combine all of the spices and seasonings together in a medium sized bowl. Next start adding the olive oil to the spice mixture. You want a thin paste-like consistency here. Pour the mixture into the freezer bag on top of the chicken. rub the mix all over the chicken or just close the ziptop and sqoosh that shit around to ensure the chicken has been fully coated with the spice mixture. Like so.

Now get that chicken into the fridge and let marinate for at least 4 hours or all the way up to overnight. I place the bag of chicken into a large bowl before refrigerating to mitigate potential spillage issues.

You can use the marinating time to prepare your other sauce-like items, which I highly recommend doing but I’m going to finish the entire chicken recipe before getting to the others.

This shit is easy now.

Next day, fire up your grill, remove the chicken from the fridge to get it to room temperature, get that fucking grill up to cooking temp and get this shit on!

Fuck yes it’s grilling season!

I let these go for about 5-7 minutes per side since my grill was running a bit hot. Put the cover on if needed to make sure the chicken cooks in the center and then flip this motherclucker over.

Oh my!

The smell of the grilled meat and the aromatic spices is goddamn delightful. There’s an exotic aroma with the coriander, cinnamon and paprika thing going. Cook for another 5 minutes or so or until reaching desired doneness.

If you are working in batches, cover the chicken with some foil and let it rest for a few minutes before slicing and serving.

Back to the sauce things.

Yogurt tahini garlic dill sauce.

1 8 oz cup of plain Greek yogurt.

1 1/2 tablespoons of tahini. Be sure to stir that shit well. If it’s been in the cupboard for awhile the oil starts to separate and you really need to stir that shit to get it back to the proper consistency. Remember the tahini=peanut butter thing?

2 small cloves of minced garlic.

Juice from 1/2 of a fresh lemon.

Zest from one half of a fresh lemon.

2 tablespoons of fresh minced dill.

Add all ingredients into a medium bowl and stir to mix well.

I made this the day before grilling, covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated over night.

On the same day I made a batch of homemade hummus.

If you would like the recipe I give the entire breakdown of this tasty bastard in this post from last year. In this batch I did not use za’atar. I mixed some freshly toasted and ground cumin into the hummus and topped the finished hummus with paprika and olive oil for serving.

Remember the ingredients in hummus?

Bet your ass!

Have you ever been to a rotisserie chicken place that is also Mediterranean in origin? Ever get the chicken and they ask if you would like some hummus and “garlic sauce” with the chicken? Seriously we have tons of these chicken places in L.A.

Do you know what that garlic sauce is called?

Fuck yes. It’s called “TOUM!” and it’s pronounced just like “Tomb!” That’s fucking awesome. I want more of my condiments to sound like death metal bands. The word is Lebanese for “garlic” and I’m going tell you straight the fuck out, this shit does not fuck around. It really is condensed garlic turned into a mayo-like substance. You better love the fuck out of garlic if you want to fuck around with this bad bwoi! Did you know that garlic can be hot? I mean burn your tongue, fire up your goddamn sinuses hot? This shit’ll learn you proper.

Toum.

5 cloves of garlic chopped.

1 cup of neutral oil like canola or safflower oil. NOT olive oil.

1 teaspoon of kosher salt.

The juice from the other half of that lemon that we used in the yogurt dill sauce.

3 tablespoons of ice water.

Get out your handy food processor and add in the garlic and salt and grind away. Stop a couple of times and scrape down the sides of the processor bowl. This should take about 2-3 minutes. Next add in the lemon juice and pulse a few times just to incorporate. Now this is where it becomes a pain in the ass. We are going to SLOWLY drizzle in the cup of oil while the food processor is whirling away. How slow? That cup of oil will be drizzled in over the course of about 7 minutes. We will stop the oil drip a couple of times to do the same slow drip thing with the ice water. Alternate every couple of minutes.

7 goddamn minutes.

I… I don’t have a photo here.

That’s because, well, I kind of fucked this up and broke the emulsion. This thing is similar to making a homemade mayonnaise since it takes a long time to blend and the emulsion can be broken if you rush.

I told you I would share my fuck-ups along with the triumphs.

If you squint at the banner image again you may notice a little puddle of white sauce on the side of the plate.

No, that is not jizm and get your goddamn mind out of the gutter. That’s fucking disgusting!.

It should really look like this.

photo courtesy of splendidtable.org

 

Now the emulsion DID break and the sauce was too thin because I added my oil too fast, but you know what?

This shit was STILL fucking delicious. Life changing, eye-tearing, fire-breathing, sinus-clearing goddamn garlicky deliciousness. Holy shitballs!

I will continue to work on this because the flavor was amazing. Cover the toum in plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve. This stuff can last a month or so in the refrigerator.

Finally I made my famous rosemary, garlic roasted potatoes that you have seen many times before. It’s wedges of potatoes tossed with olive oil, fresh rosemary, – how fresh?

This crazy plant survived the entire winter and is still growing.

minced garlic and sprinkled with salt. Roast in a 350 oven for about 50 minutes.

The potatoes come out like this.

There’s some naan on the side that I grilled on my charcoal grill when the chicken was finished.

Get your serving plate and serve up. I tried to be authentic with the naan but you could have just thrown the grilled chicken and the sauce substances in a big ol’ tortilla and rolled that shit up.

One more time, here’s that crappy photo.

That’s the sliced chicken, covered with some of the yogurt tahini sauce sitting on the naan on the top of the plate, potatoes next to it, clockwise heading down is the fresh hummus followed by the TOUM!

Just spectacular. So much flavor. Smokey, spiced chicken, fresh rosemary garlic potatoes and the nuclear blast of the TOUM!

Yes, you can say this is a garlic forward meal.

There you go folks.

Branch out. Try new things and try new cuisines and explore the world with your taste buds.

I can tell you this. “Im very fucking sure of this meal!” Christ what a dingbat.

Until next time, remember:

Birbirlerine hoşnut olmak. 

That means be nice to each other.

PEACE!

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yeah right is a lifelong Vikings fan. He is into self denial and still harbors hope. Loves to cook, read and drink. But he doesn't plate.
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[…] one is my Waterloo. I’ve tried this twice, here’s a link to the first effort and while it still produces a goddamn delicious result, I am just not […]

[…] rather confusing photo is from the time we made grilled chicken shawarma. A right tasty bastard […]

ballsofsteelandfury

I guess I’m going to Zankou for lunch this week…

JerBear50

I’ve actually never had shawarma but goddamn does that sound good. Huge Greek population around here but not many middle-eastern restaurants. Think I might be trying that this week.
For the garlic sauce, why does olive oil not work, just too strongly flavored?

JerBear50

I’ve never messed around with making one before but I’m gonna have to give it a try. I dont dig yogurt zauces which is what prevails around here. I fucking love garlic though. I make roasted garlic mojo to keep in the fridge regularly.

JustStopDude

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Senor Weaselo

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Moose -The End Is Well Nigh
JustStopDude

Cars dropping out left and right in the Bahrain Grand Prix…

Mercedes is looking weak for the first time in recent memory. Red Bull is taking people out…

Crazy race so far.

JustStopDude

Five cars out already.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

This post has inspired me to have schwarma for lunch.

Senor Weaselo

That does look good. However, in rebuttal, fuck those genocide-denying pricks. But they do have good curses…

King Hippo

oh, like you haven’t denied a genocide or two urself, mister!!

Spanky Datass

My neighbor and I had a nice gyro/shawarma discussion over beers just yesterday. I think I may have swayed him towards Team Lamb Shawarma. GO TEAM! Great post!
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Romonobyl

DAWWWWW!!! Doesn’t he look delicious!?!

Don T

I love it when breakups work out in the end. Unlike
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Senor Weaselo

I guess you can if you say “Kali ma” beforehand and rip it from the chest yourself.

Romonobyl

If this pic was modernized, that would be one of those cell-phones in her left hand.

blaxabbath

Don’t tell me how to treat others!

litre_cola

There are more than 10 Lebo places down the avenue I live. It is so great after the bar.

Romonobyl

I first read that as Lesbo places. I gotta change my internet viewing habits.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

No, there’s only like three of those.

Senor Weaselo

Wasn’t that the whole punchline for the friend in Mean Girls?

ballsofsteelandfury

Me too

JustStopDude

In Roanoke there is a small downtown restaurant called “Cedars” that does Lebanese food. For the life of me, I can never get coworkers to go there for lunch except for the Middle Eastern guys and I can’t figure out why.

The sharwmas are amazing. And its cheap as shit.

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh

As usual.

Gratliff

Sweet jesus. Chicken shawarma is so fucking good. What’s it going to take to get you to move out this way and feed me? We don’t have much to offer here, but if you like white people who can’t cook, mid-Michigan is the place to be.

Gratliff

If we had good paying jobs, we wouldn’t be Michigan

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh

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entropy

Lazarus rises from dead, gets pat on the back, and ultimately hundreds of shitty novels named after him. Jesus does it, he gets holidays and fans and all sorts of perks. It’s vital to remember: being first at something is not as important as being best at it.

Anyway. Today is another Easter year where I get to watch the Mets play during the day, and probably lose, because that’s what they do to me on holidays.

Moose -The End Is Well Nigh
King Hippo

Looks fucking good!

Hippo tennis’ed this am, played like merde. Got skunked first set, at least took the 2nd to a respectable 7-5. But man, am I feeling the years. And the PeyPey neck that may just land me on career IR eventually.

Also, fuck the Redshite and Manure. Everton needed a path to Top 4 if they won out, even though they weren’t gonna. But fuck you anyways.

Romonobyl

Another great entry! I wonder if this could be done on a gas grill with a rotisserie? I’ve done that with homemade gyros, good but I haven’t perfected it yet. There’s even a basket-type attachment that could work for that chicken, or do plenty of tying up and skewering.
Ever try pita bread? It take a lot of time and work, but wow, is it worth it! I just wish I had the skill to roll dough in a perfect circle.
Do you have any idea what happened to my Weekday Rations post? I submitted it over a week ago but it didn’t show up. Internet Dad must be on vacation.

Romonobyl

I guess Balls is allowed some non-DFO time…for now.

ballsofsteelandfury

Yeah, that was my bad since I was out of the country. I’ll check it out tomorrow and schedule for Tuesday.

Romonobyl

You’ve inspired me to do the pita thing again. This time I’ll do the rolling before the 2nd bottle of wine. i’ll letchya know.

Rikki-Tikki-Deadly

Seems like an issue with the horizontal rotisserie is that the fat would drip OFF the meat instead of down into it.

Romonobyl

Not too much, there’s more than enough fat inside that loaf to make up for it. As the meat rotates, the heat sorta fries the surface as it cooks from the outside in. Timing is important as the crusty bits are shaved away and served.
Damn this makes me hungry.

JerBear50

Maynard is supposed to be a pretty open-minded guy. He might be open to some sort of arrangement.

BrettFavresColonoscopy

In the spirit of Easter, why don’t you try nailing her and see if everything rises again afterward?

Romonobyl

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Unsurprised

You better love the fuck out of garlic if you want to fuck around with this bad bwoi! Did you know that garlic can be hot? I mean burn your tongue, fire up your goddamn sinuses hot? This shit’ll learn you proper.

The restaurant I have guests eat at here in food town is Nicholas, a Lebanese restaurant. The toum is fucking amazing.

Great recipe and essay, as usual.

Unsurprised

I got some bacon ends at the market to sear quickly at high heat before I throw them in with the beans I’m making probably Monday, since I didn’t get around to soaking them tonight (and I’m not going to now just because I’m up). Mmm.

They look like pieces of chicharrone before frying, which makes me a bit sad I can’t go full fucking Mexican yet. When I visit, I want to try and make my enchiladas but without the store-bought parts. But I’m okay not making the tortillas. Although making sheets, since it’s more of a lasagna than a casserole or just flat enchiladas, maybe that might be for the best. Time will tell. But now I want chicharrones for the first course. The enchiladas are still the entree course because I do not skimp on the chicken.

Maybe fry up some sopapillas, too. Sopes, as they’re called here are just inferior compared to the monsters I’m nostalgic for. (The first photo is of stuffed sopapillas, but good enough. The regular ones always seem to be bigger than the ones they stuff.)
http://abqstyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/modelo-5.jpg
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Unsurprised

I have seriously considered having someone FedEx me food from El Modelo on multiple occasions.

King Hippo

The lady who has cut my hair for 24 years is Lebanese, and taught me the great phrase “Lebanese shower” – “pits, tits, and asshole, man.” She’s the fucking best. Hates to cook, though.