Homemade shish taouk
- Preparation 1 h
- Refrigeration 24 h
- Cooking 15 min
- Servings 6
- Freezing Raw marinated chicken only
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🥙 There is a shish taouk counter five minutes from my house. I still make it here.
Everybody has one nearby. Open late, vertical grill in the window, and ordering is absolutely faster than cooking. But I get something out of making it myself that a delivery bag never gives me. And the sandwich ends up being mine: as many sauces as I feel like, the toppings the way I want them, built by hand.
🍗 Chicken thighs, and a full twenty-four hours
Yogurt, lemon, garlic, smoked paprika, then a whole day in the fridge. Most shish tawook recipes stop at four hours and reach for breast meat, and there is a reason for that. Leave lean breast in this much acid and it goes chalky. Thighs take the beating. They come off the grill a little charred at the edges and still juicy in the middle. Want the Greek cousin of the same idea, on breast, in far less time? That is my Greek yogurt chicken marinade.
🫙 The whole sandwich, pink turnips included
Shish taouk comes out of Syrian and Lebanese street food. You will see it spelled shish tawook or shish tawouk too; same dish, different transliteration. What separates the real thing from a plain chicken skewer is never the chicken. It is everything around it. The yogurt garlic sauce. The homemade hummus. And above all the pickled turnips that turn bright pink from two beets sitting in the brine. Then the foil, wrapped tight, exactly like at the counter.
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🍖 Thighs. I am not moving on this one.
Nearly every shish taouk recipe out there reaches for chicken breast. Over four hours of marinating, fine. Over twenty-four, no: the lemon and the yogurt start breaking down lean meat and you end up with cotton. A thigh carries enough fat and enough connective tissue to sit in acid for a full day and come out better than it went in.
If you are set on breast meat, cut the marinating time to 8 hours. No more.
🔪 About the skewers
“Shish” means skewer, so yes, thread the chicken on in a zigzag. But I will be straight with you: it cooks exactly the same way it does lying on the grate, and it adds nothing to the recipe. What actually matters is unfolding the thighs completely over the fire. Wide open, flat. That is where the colour comes from.
⏲️ Twelve minutes, hands off
Flipping meat every two minutes is what gives you pale chicken. Barbecue wide open, chicken down, timer on, walk away.
💗 The turnips, and where the pink comes from
After 24 hours they are exactly right. Crunchy, salty, sharp, and pink from the two beets bleeding into the brine. They keep for two to three weeks in the fridge in their liquid, so I always make more than six pitas need. They have their own pickled turnips recipe on the site for that reason.
🥄 This garlic sauce is not toum
Toum is an emulsion of garlic, oil and lemon juice, whipped until it turns white and stiff, with no dairy in it at all. What I make here is a yogurt sauce: raw garlic chopped very fine, mint, chives, a thread of olive oil. Two different things doing the same job inside a pita, one of them a lot gentler than the other. If you want gentler still, my homemade tzatziki slides right in.
📦 The foil
Wrapping the base tight keeps the sandwich standing and lets you eat it with one hand. I serve it immediately after, no resting.
🧊 What freezes
The assembled sandwich, never. The raw chicken in its marinade, absolutely: freezer bag, freezer, and it finishes marinating as it thaws in the fridge.
✅ What do I serve with homemade shish taouk?
In a pita, that is the takeout version. But I also plate it, with rice and a fattoush salad, and the chicken gets room to breathe. Homemade hummus on the side, pita chips to scoop up whatever garlic sauce is left, and dinner is done.
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Ingredients for the pickled turnips
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) white vinegar
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) cider vinegar
- 3 1/2 cups (875 ml) cold water
- 3 tablespoons (45 ml) salt
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) brown sugar
- 2 small bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) coriander seeds
- 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
- 2 small beets, peeled and cut into sticks
- 2 turnips (800 g), peeled and cut into sticks
Ingredients for the marinade
- 800 g boneless chicken thighs, trimmed
- The juice of 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) Greek yogurt
- 4 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 3 tablespoons (45 ml) olive oil
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon (15 ml) smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) ground ginger
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
Ingredients for the garlic sauce
- 1 cup (250 ml) Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) finely chopped fresh mint
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) finely chopped fresh chives
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
- The juice of 1/2 lemon
- 4 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
Ingredients for the rest
- 6 pita breads
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) hummus
- Chopped lettuce
- Sliced tomatoes
- Red onions, thinly sliced
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Preparation
- In a saucepan over high heat, add the white vinegar, cider vinegar, cold water, salt, brown sugar, bay leaves, coriander seeds and garlic, then stir. Bring to a boil, remove from the heat and stir for 1 minute to dissolve the salt and the sugar. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, add the beets and the turnips, then pour the vinegar mixture over them. Stir gently, cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.
- Place the chicken in a large airtight container. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, add the rest of the marinade ingredients, season generously with salt and pepper and stir. Pour over the chicken, mix well and refrigerate for 24 hours. (If you are using chicken breasts, stop at 8 hours: lean meat will not hold up to 24 hours in a marinade this acidic.)
- In a large bowl, add the garlic sauce ingredients, season with salt and pepper and stir. Refrigerate for 24 hours.
- Take the chicken out of the marinade and thread it onto skewers in a zigzag, unfolding each thigh completely so it lies flat. Without skewers it works just as well: lay the unfolded pieces straight on the grate.
- Preheat the barbecue to maximum and oil the grates. Lay the chicken down and grill for 12 minutes without turning it and without moving it. It will char a little at the edges, and it will be delicious. Remove from the heat and chop coarsely. Set aside.
- For the oven version, preheat the oven to 450 °F (230 °C). Lay the unfolded chicken on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Chop coarsely and set aside.
- Build your shish taouk! Spread 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of garlic sauce on a pita bread, followed by 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of hummus. Add some lettuce, 4 to 5 turnip sticks, chicken, a few slices of tomato and red onion. Fold it over and wrap the base in aluminum foil, the way they do it at the counter! Serve right away.
There is no real English name for it, so the Arabic one travelled with the dish. “Shish” means skewer and “tawook” means chicken, so the literal translation is chicken skewer. On a menu you will see it written shish taouk, shish tawook or shish tawouk, and it is always the same thing: marinated grilled chicken served in a pita with a white garlic sauce.
Chicken, always. If the same marinade and the same grill treatment are applied to beef or lamb, the dish gets a different name. I use boneless chicken thighs rather than breast, which is the one place my recipe breaks with almost everyone else’s.
Chicken marinated in Greek yogurt, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil, with tomato paste, paprika, oregano, cinnamon and ground ginger. The yogurt tenderizes, the lemon sharpens, the tomato paste is what gives the chicken that orange-red colour on the grill. My paprika is smoked rather than sweet, which is a personal departure from the classic.
Shish tawook is chicken in a yogurt and lemon marinade. Shish kebab is usually lamb or beef, and the marinade leans on oil, onion and warm spices instead of dairy. Shawarma is a third thing again: meat stacked on a vertical spit and shaved off as it turns, not threaded on a skewer. My shawarma grilled leg of lamb steak shows what that spice profile tastes like.
It is Syrian and Lebanese street food, sold from counters and grills all over the Levant long before it reached North America. It travelled with those communities and it is now everywhere in Quebec, which is where I first ate it.
Yes. Oven at 450 °F (230 °C), chicken unfolded on a parchment-lined baking sheet, about 15 minutes. You lose the smoke off the grill, but the smoked paprika in the marinade covers part of that gap on its own.
In a pita with garlic sauce, hummus, lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickled turnips. Or on a plate with rice and a fattoush salad, which stretches the same amount of chicken across more people. If there is grilled chicken left over, my quesadillas with shish taouk chicken and caramelized onion were built for exactly that.
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