Now I Can Make it at Home!

 

I love Greek food. Luckily for me, there are a ton of Greek fast food places nearby...but sometimes you just want to know how to make it for yourself at home. I have a fantastic Greek cookbook that my mom bought me years ago. It is called Perfect Greek (ISBN 978-1-4054-8858-7). You can find it here. It is a really wonderful, authentic cookbook. Everything I have made out of this book has been spot on. I love the meatball recipe from this book (which I have already posted here).

 

 

Chicken Kabobs with Yogurt Sauce (Chicken Souvlaki)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups authentic Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp chopped fresh herbs such as oregano, dill, tarron, or parsley
Salt and pepper
4 large skinned, boned chicken breasts
8 firm stems of fresh rosemary, optional (I used bamboo skewers)
Shredded romaine lettuce, to serve
Rice, to serve
Lemon wedges, to garnish

Directions:

To make the sauce, put the yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, herbs, salt, and pepper in a large bowl and mix well together.

Cut the chicken breasts into chunks measuring about 1 1/2 inches square. Add to the yogurt mixture and toss well together until the chicken pieces are coated. Cover and leave to marinate in the refrigerator for about 1 hour. If you are using wooden skewers, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes before use.

Preheat the broiler. Thread the pieces of chicken onto 8 flat, greased, metal kabob skewers, wooden skewers, or rosemary stems and place on a greased broiler pan.

Cook the kabobs under the broiler for about 15 minutes, turning and basting with the remaining marinade occasionally, until lightly browned and tender.

Pour the remaining marinade into a pan and heat gently but do not boil. Serve the kabobs with shredded lettuce on a bed of rice and garnish with lemon wedges. Accompany with yogurt sauce.

Source: Perfect Greek cookbook as noted above. You can find the link in my introduction to this post.

Notes: I didn't have fresh herbs on hand, so I used 1 tsp. dried oregano and 1 tsp. dried dill in the tzatziki yogurt sauce.

I skipped the Romaine lettuce. Instead, we served our souvlaki with this recipe for Greek Festival Lemon Rice that we have posted before. I also served it with some of this Greek tzatziki. Finally, we put the chicken on top of some pita bread and served it with additional cucumber and tomato slices.

My boys loved this. Everyone gobbled it up. This was fantastic. Next time, I will double it. Also, I soaked the bamboo skewers for quite awhile, but they still smoked a bit when I broiled them. I had to cover the ends of the skewers with foil to stop the smoking and charring. Maybe someday I will have to invest in some metal skewers.