Chicken on a Stick – or if you’re Greek:
Souvlaki
Souvlaki (Greek for, you guessed it, skewer) is marinated pork, chicken, beef, or lamb that is either cut into pieces or ground and then stacked onto a skewer. Ground meat is shaped around the skewer.
This blog post contains affiliate links & I may make a small commission from your purchase at no additional cost to you. Thank you for reading!
Enjoyed by eating the meat straight off the souvlaki, Cal must’ve been a Greek in a past life. He absolutely loves, loves, LOVES these “chicken on a stick’s” so much we’ve adopted it as an after-school snick snack. More protein, less Little Debbies. Don’t @ me. Or do. I don’t care lol.
You can mix up your marinade and find what your family loves best. I found my combination while mixing and matching Middle Eastern & Mediterranean ingredients and this is the one flavor profile that your boy Cal really took to. The Greek’s love the preserved lemon and so does Cal.
I’ve raved about preserved lemon in other recipes and it’s became a real staple in my kitchen. Some of the ingredients found below aren’t things you’re probably going to have on hand (yet), but they can easily be found on Amazon or Walmart, and I’ve listed substitutes as well.
One last thing about making this chicken: you want your chicken to be long, thin strips skewered through the middle so that it cooks evenly on the grill. You can also cube the chicken, but you should be diligent about making sure the chicken is cut in even sizes and making sure all pieces are cooked all the way through. I’ve just found that cubing them sometimes makes it harder to cook them evenly. Sometimes I make things harder than they need to be, though. Whichever way, let the chicken marinade for as long as possible (overnight).
This is so great to make at night; put it in the fridge, and it's ready to go to after school or even for dinner the next day.
Enough about me.
Get these ingredients for the recipe:
Cal’s Chicken on a Stick
Ingredients: 2 large chicken breasts, cut into rectangular cubes 1 preserved lemon peel, or 2 lemons zested & juiced 1 ½ T. powdered garlic 1 T. dried dill 1 tsp. Aleppo Pepper (or red pepper flakes) ½ tsp. sumac ¼ C. fresh cilantro ½ C. olive oil
Directions: 1. Blend the preserved lemon and cilantro. Then add the dry ingredients and olive oil. Blend until well combined. 2. Cut the chicken in long, thin strips. Put in a bowl and marinade 2+ hours or up to overnight. 3. Put skewer through center of each strip of chicken. 4. Grill over medium-high until chicken is cooked through. 5. Eat on the stick.
Also, I didn’t say this before because I want you to make this recipe… But if you really don’t want to do all these steps but it still sounds so good – buy this Greek seasoning and generously season all sides of your chicken after you’ve cut it. You can let it marinade in a bowl with olive oil or you can just give it a little drizzle of the oil immediately after you put them on the skewers. Put them on the grill and voila – a REALLY good 3 ingredient chicken hack.
Comments