Chicken Shawarma

Ingredients

• 800 g boneless chicken thighs
• 150 g natural yoghurt
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 5 garlic cloves, crushed
• juice of 1 lemon
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 4 flatbreads, warmed
• 3 tbsp tahini
• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 2 tomatoes, sliced
• a handful of parsley

Method

1. Marinate

   Mix the chicken with the yoghurt, spices, garlic, lemon, oil and plenty of salt. Leave at least two hours, overnight if you can.

   2 h

2. Stack, don't spread

   Pile the thighs tightly on top of each other in a small roasting tin rather than spreading them out. Stacked, the outside chars while the inside stays juicy — the closest a domestic oven gets to a vertical spit.

3. Roast

   Roast at 220°C until charred at the edges and cooked through.

   35 min

4. Make the tahini sauce

   Whisk the tahini with cold water a spoonful at a time. It seizes into a paste before it loosens — keep going and it turns pale and pourable. Season with lemon and salt.

5. Rest and slice

   Rest ten minutes, then slice thinly across the stack. Pile into warm flatbreads with the onion, tomato, parsley and tahini sauce.

   10 min