Homemade Shawarma/Doner style chicken

>>8260853
IVE FOUND A GREEK PLACE LOCALLY THAT COOKS THEIR CHICKEN LIKE THIS AND IT IS VERY ENJOYABLE.

>>8260853
The trick to at-home shawarma if how you cook it. The trick to that soft, yet slightly cripsy taste is this:

You first bake it in the oven, 100%. When done it will be soft. Then dice the chicken, you can use the slicer option on a food processor, but don't shred it.

Take the diced chicken and sautée it is a pan on the stove until it gets a little coloring or desired crispiness.

The seasoning is also important and you can marinade it overnight. The "secret ingredient" restaurants use is cardamon. A good seasoning, involves cardamon, garlic, cumin (a little), and tumeric (also a little). Mix all of this into a scoop of Greek yogurt and coat the chicken for the marinade.

Your spice recipes can differ, and most do, but this is the basic.

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>>8260868

Glad to hear it buddy.

>>8260901

Thanks man.

I'll definitely do the oven then sautee trick, I always forget how much better and more efficient the oven is vs just pan frying it. I'm not sure if I was using Cardamon or not, I think it may have been one of the spices I skipped over for lack of having it (always used garlic, cumin, some other ones I forget.) so I'll make sure to get that too.

Is there such a thing as over-marinating, on that topic? Normally I let it go overnight but I heard some say you can over-marinate and have the meat end up tougher than normal.

>>8260941
I've had it marinate for two days, not an issue. The trick to marinade is the size of the chicken pieces. Cut pieces half the size of your palm marinading for a few hours is better than whole breasts marinading overnight. Marinade isn't going to magically force its way through meat molecules, no matter what people say.

And you must try cardamon, honestly. It should be the biggest ingredient in your shawarma spice mix. Tumeric is earthy and goes a long way so use it sparingly, and honestly, it is mostly used for coloring.

>>8260941
>I heard some say you can over-marinate and have the meat end up tougher than normal.
that happens because of acidity in the marinade. greek yogurt is fairly acidic but iirc I've read that there's some other compounds in dairy that counteract the toughening effect. so you should be safe to do it as long as you want

in my experience though the food doesn't taste any different if you marinade for more than just a few hours. I'll usually mix up my marinades first thing when I get home from work so they've been on for about 3 hours before I cook.

>>8260853
This sounds a lot like carnitas. Maybe you should check out how that's done and just switch out the meat and flavors