Daily Favorites: Chicken Shawarma with Tzatziki Sauce

This dish comes out of our Hoagie Middle East division. 

On Thursday, Mrs. Hoagie Central and I attended a cooking class with a Mediterranean menu. We made hummus, tzatziki, dolmas, and beef kofta. All of it was pretty good, but the tzatziki was the star of the show. It's made with greek yogurt that is 120 calories for an entire cup, so the serving pictured above is probably under 20 calories. 

Right way I started planning a dish I could make that featured this sauce. I had heard Mark hype up Chicken Shawarma a bunch so I figured I'd start with that. 

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To make the shawarma, first I mixed together a seasoning blend:

1 ½ tsp ground cumin

1 ½ tsp smoked paprika

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ teaspoon dried oregano

¾ teaspoon ground turmeric

⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

I took half of that blend and added three smashed garlic cloves, juice from half a lemon, and a drizzle of olive oil. (I learned along the way that some flavors are fat soluble, so I include olive oil in my marinades, but much less than is usually recommended. It works out.) I let 4 chicken tenderloins marinate in that for an hour. 

When it was time to cook, I turned the broiler on high and placed my tenderloins on a wire rack with a pan underneath. I then used the reserved half of my seasoning blend and patted it on all sides. I've found that marinating is good, but meats require additional seasoning to be really coated. This method gets the benefits of both. 

I broiled them for 10-11 minutes, flipping once. Came out great. 

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While the chicken was marinating, I made the tzatziki sauce. 

1 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt (I used Chobani this time)

¼ cucumber, grated and squeezed

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp chopped fresh dill

Juice of ½ lemon

Pinch of salt and pepper

The only key here is to grate the cucumber and then take a kitchen towel or paper towel and squeeze out all the liquid. You just want dry cucumber pulp. 

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For assembly, I split a pita in half and filled each pocket with a just a bit of shredded lettuce, red onion, minced cucumber, tons of sliced chicken and topped it with tzatziki sauce. I added a thin layer of hummus to one of my pita pockets, but seemed unnecessary. 

Here's a bonus shot of the chicken that just came out from the broiler:

It had great flavor and color too. 

The brand of pitas I had here were 160 calories. I'll estimate 300 for the chicken. Another 40 for the sauces. 

Pretty darn great for 500 calories. I had two pita pockets plus a few extra pieces of chicken. The pita was great very satisfying and fresh. The chicken and sauce by itself allowed more of the chicken seasoning to shine. Would be equally good with chicken, sauce and a side of rice.