Chicken breast marinated in yoghurt, lemon and a lot of garlic, then grilled hard so the edges catch. Served over rice with a sharp salad rather than in a wrap.
Prep
20 mins
Cook
15 mins
Servings
4
Per serving
£2.10
Difficulty
easy
Shish taouk lives or dies on the marinade doing two jobs at once, tenderising with yoghurt acid and seasoning right through with garlic. Given six hours it turns even chicken breast, which normally dries out on a grill, genuinely juicy. Tomato paste in the marinade is what gives the finished skewers their colour.
Crush the garlic with half a teaspoon of the salt using the flat of a knife until it becomes a smooth paste rather than chopped pieces.
Pasted garlic distributes through the marinade. Chopped garlic just burns on the grill.
Whisk the yoghurt, garlic paste, lemon juice, 3 tbsp of the olive oil, tomato puree, paprika, cumin, oregano, cinnamon, the remaining salt and the black pepper together in a large bowl.
Add the chicken cubes and turn until thickly coated. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and ideally overnight.
Do not go beyond about 12 hours. The lemon eventually turns the surface of the meat chalky.
Take the chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking and thread onto skewers, leaving a small gap between each cube. Wipe off any thick clumps of marinade.
Gaps let the heat reach the sides. Packed tight, the cubes steam each other.
Heat a griddle pan or grill to as hot as it will go. Cook the skewers for 10 to 12 minutes, turning every 3 minutes, until charred in patches and just firm. Cut into a cube to check it has lost its pink.
While they cook, toss the sliced red onion with the sumac, the remaining olive oil and a pinch of salt, scrunching it with your fingers to soften.
Scrunching the onion with sumac takes the harsh raw bite out of it in a couple of minutes.
Rest the skewers for 5 minutes, then serve over rice with the sumac onions, the parsley and lemon wedges.
Resting matters even for chicken. Straight off the grill the juices run out onto the plate.