From Dearborn to D.C., my quest for the perfect shawarma is a deep passion rooted in Americana as much as apple pie itself. Growing up in Ohio, minutes from the Michigan border, the drive to Dearborn Michigan was less than an hour, a short jaunt that was taken so often it really was a part of our family’s grocery shopping routine.
My hometown mosque was founded in the early 1900s by Syrian and Lebanese immigrants, one of the oldest Islamic centers in America. And every Sunday when religious learning classes were held & families gathered to listen to a sermon, some of the community’s Lebanese grandmothers would gather in the massive industrial kitchen on the first floor and cook and bake endless Lebanese traditional foods, from fatayer, to kibbeh, to the most coveted of all: shawarma.And so my tastebuds became indulgently spoiled by the rich heritage of five generations of tradition fervently maintained, perfected, and passed down folded into the layers of dough, sauce, and meat.
To say that I am a shawarma elitist is an understatement. Shawarma is not a simple sandwich, it is a level of food delicacy that is either done properly or not done well at all, there is no in between. To understand this, one must have had a proper shawarma sandwich to then understand how this is so.However, finding a shawarma on the level that is worthy of consuming outside of the capital of Arab America (Dearborn Michigan & surrounding areas including my hometown of Toledo) has been a tireless quest, one that has proven itself exhausting and difficult.
Instead, I set out to recreate this delicacy within my own home. I had worked as a sous chef for countless hours with the Lebanese grandmother’s in my mosque’s kitchen, and though they had not explicitly taught me the steps, the memory of the recipe lived in the measurements of my eye’s gaze and the touch of my fingertips as I assisted them in the past.
As I set out to recreate this recipe, my hands and eyes took charge, guiding me through the depths of trial and error until I achieved at last the very flavors my soul yearned for, a taste of home. This recipe has become one I take great pride in, as being able to transport the iconic Dearborn shawarma into my own home is no small feat. I present to you a component of American food history, a taste of the pride and joy of the Midwest, my recipe for chicken shawarma.
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Utilize boneless chicken thigh cut in long elongated rectangles.
- Place chicken thigh into a large bowl. Add oil, garlic, lemon juice, and all of the spices and salt.
- Mix the chicken mixture well by hand until all spices are well incorporated. Refrigerate the marinated chicken for at least one hour, best if done over night.
- Chop one onion in half. Lay both halves flat side down into a large casserole dish.
- Place two bamboo skewers into each onion, such that they are on two opposite sides of the onion.
- Place the onions next to each other, and begin skewering the chicken thigh onto the bamboo sticks, so that each corner of the chicken goes on to one bamboo stick. Slide them down all the way to the bottom of the skewers so they are stacked on top of the onion.
- Lay the stack of skewered chicken on to its side in the casserole dish.
- Pour remaining marinade into the pan with the chicken. Cover with aluminum foil.
- Bake for 1 hour on 400 degrees F. In the last 5 minutes, remove the aluminum foil and broil if necessary while flipping the stack of chicken thighs so that it gets a golden crispy exterior.
- Stand your chicken back up and using a sharp knife shave the chicken off of the skewers similar to how you would cut a chicken shawarma spit.
- Assemble your sandwich by cutting a large pita bread in half around the perimeter so you have two equal sized flat circles.
- Place your desired sauce on top and then some of the chicken in the center of one of the slices of bread, in a long line to span the width of the bread. Add any of your preferred condiments, traditionally it is filled with garlic sauce, sliced pickles, or sometimes can be filled with tahini sauce instead if you don’t prefer garlic.
- Roll this bread filled with chicken, it may tear but continue to gently roll it. Place this rolled bread on top of the second slice of pita, roll delicately from one side to the next until you have completely rolled the pita into a classic shawarma shape.
- Place into a pan with hot oil for 2-5 minutes to grill the exterior of the bread. Noshejaan!
