My family will rib me for sharing yet another Middle Eastern recipe. And yet another one skillet recipe! I love that they have no control over what I post. Unlike deciding the menu for our regular family dinners. The number of emails that fly back and forth as we argue over what the menu will be and who is making what….. Oh boy. It’s ridiculous. Absolute undeniable evidence that I was born into a foodie family! Chicken Shawarma is one of my most requested recipes. By my friends, that is. No one in my family has ever asked me for this recipe. It’s a matter of principle. They can’t make fun of how often I make Middle Eastern dishes then come crawling to me for my secret Chicken Shawarma recipe!
It’s not-so-secret anymore anyway because I shared my stovetop / BBQ Chicken Shawarma recipe last year – you can find it here. Hmm. I wonder if anyone in my family has used the recipe? 😉 One of the reasons I love Chicken Shawarma so much is because I think that the effort vs flavour is off the charts. Just a handful of spices packs a serious punch! And it is spices that I always have in stock – cumin, coriander, paprika and cardamon. Sometimes I add cayenne pepper too, for a bit of a kick (I’ve made it optional for this recipe). So it was just a matter of time before I created a one pot version of Chicken Shawarma. Well, not one pot. One skillet. At least, that’s what I used, but it can definitely be made in a pot too! In fact, this is ideal to make in a dutch oven. 🙂
The wonderful benefit of cooking the chicken and the rice together in one pot is that the juices of the chicken drips down into the rice as they cook. So basically, the rice is being cooked with the best stock in the world! There is so much flavour in the rice, honestly, I’d be happy to forgo the chicken and just have the rice for dinner! Well actually, that’s just a blatant lie. I’m not passing on the chicken. I want BOTH! The pilaf for this Baked Chicken Shawarma and Rice is adapted from a recipe by the great Yotam Ottolenghi, from his cookbook Jerusalem. It’s flavoured with a touch of cardamon and a couple of cinnamon sticks and the fragrance is delicate and exotic. Because the spice rub for the chicken is so intense, it isn’t necessary to marinate for very long. Though it certainly would benefit from marinating overnight. As long as you get a bit of skin with each bite of chicken, there is plenty of flavour, so I rarely marinate it. I consider this Baked Chicken Shawarma and Rice to be my midweek version. We’re half way through the week! Back Friday with something delish for the weekend. 🙂 – Nagi x
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