isithalal.food · Recipes
Chicken shawarma
Oven chicken shawarma with a spiced yogurt marinade, garlic toum, pickles and flatbread, made with Halal chicken and a bread you have checked.
Each method follows published technique for the dish, and every Halal substitution is checked against the ingredient pages we cite. Photographs come from our ingredient library rather than the finished dish.
Why Halal checks matter here
Shawarma is Halal where the chicken is; outside the Middle East, check the chicken, and check shop flatbread for L-cysteine and shop garlic sauce for unnamed additives.
Halal-critical ingredients
- Chicken: Outside Muslim-majority countries, shawarma shops and supermarket chicken are not always Halal-slaughtered. Use a Halal butcher or a certified pack. See Chicken and Shawarma.
- Flatbread: Some industrial breads use L-cysteine (E920) as a dough conditioner; its source is not always stated. Choose bread without E920, or certified bread. See L-cysteine.
- Shop garlic sauce: Jars sold as garlic sauce or toum can contain egg, milk powder, or unnamed flavourings and stabilisers. Make toum at home, or read the label.
Ingredients
Chicken and marinade
- 1 kg (2.2 lb) Halal boneless chicken thighs
- 120 g (½ cup) plain yogurt
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) lemon juice
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) olive oil
- 15 g (3 cloves) garlic, crushed
- 4 g (2 tsp) ground cumin
- 4 g (2 tsp) sweet paprika
- 2 g (1 tsp) ground coriander
- 2 g (½ tsp) ground turmeric
- 1 g (½ tsp) ground cinnamon
- 1 g (½ tsp) ground allspice
- 0.5 g (¼ tsp) ground cardamom
- 10 g (1½ tsp) fine salt
- 1 g (½ tsp) black pepper, ground
Toum (garlic sauce)
- 60 g (1 head) garlic cloves, peeled, green germs removed
- 4 g (¾ tsp) fine salt
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) lemon juice
- 45 ml (3 tbsp) ice water
- 300 ml (1¼ cups) neutral oil such as sunflower
To serve
- 8 (8) flatbreads or Arabic pita, label-checked
- 150 g (1 cup) pickled turnips and cucumbers
- 2 (2) tomatoes, sliced
- 15 g (½ cup) flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 400 g (14 oz) chips (fries), optional
Method
- Marinate the chicken. Whisk the yogurt, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, spices, salt and pepper. Add the chicken thighs and coat them well. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours, or overnight. Thighs stay juicy at high heat where breast dries out. Use Halal chicken; that is the check that decides the dish.
- Make the toum. Blitz the garlic and salt in a food processor until finely minced, scraping down. With the motor running, add the oil in a very thin stream, alternating every 60 ml or so with a tablespoon of lemon juice or ice water, until you have a thick, white, fluffy sauce. Going slowly is what keeps it from splitting. Toum is just garlic, salt, lemon and oil; many shop garlic sauces add egg, milk powder or unnamed flavourings, so read the jar if you buy one.
- Roast hot. Heat the oven to 230 °C (fan 210 °C). Spread the chicken on a lined tray in one layer and roast for 25–30 minutes, until charred at the edges and 74 °C in the thickest part. For more char, finish under a hot grill for 2–3 minutes.
- Slice like the spit. Rest the chicken 5 minutes, then slice it thinly across the grain and toss it with the juices in the tray. Thin slices with crisp edges are what make it taste like shawarma from a vertical spit.
- Wrap. Warm the flatbreads. Spread each with toum, add chicken, pickles, tomato, parsley and a few chips, and roll tightly. Some shop flatbreads list L-cysteine (E920), a dough conditioner that can come from feathers or hair; choose one without it or one that is certified.
Allergens
milk (yogurt), gluten (flatbread)
How this recipe was researched
Method specified editorially from Levantine chicken shawarma technique (boneless thigh marinated in yogurt, lemon, garlic and warm spices, roasted hot and sliced thin to mimic the spit) and the emulsified garlic sauce toum, with this site's Shawarma, Chicken and L-cysteine pages. Timings follow published technique rather than a kitchen test.
Photograph from our ingredient library, not the finished dish.