Greek Chicken Souvlaki & 20 Minute Pita

Hey, what's up? Today I'm going to show you how to make the Greek-inspired grilled chicken dish known as Chicken Souvlaki. I'm also going to show you how to make a fresh, handmade pita in under 20 minutes. Then I'm going to show you a couple of fresh condiments to put on top of the chicken and inside the pita. Then we'll roll the whole thing up into a delicious Mediterranean-style wrap. To get started, I'll grab two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Thighs over breasts here because breast meat is pretty hard to get right, and it's not as juicy or as flavorful as thighs. Plus, thighs are nearly impossible to overcook, so they're the best choice. To prep these for the grill, I'll cut in half longways, then I'll turn 90 degrees and cut those strips down into six roughly equal-sized pieces. To get these grilled evenly, we want chunks that are no larger than one inch. And once I've got two pounds of thighs cubed up, I'll slide them into a medium bowl, then add in my souvlaki marinade. That'll be 125 grams of olive oil, 15 grams of salt, 30 grams of minced garlic, 5 grams of oregano, 5 grams black pepper, 100 grams of Dijon mustard. Then I'll grab two lemons and my microplane and rip off the lemon's zest. In my opinion, most of the aromatic qualities of a lemon live here instead of in the juice, and it's a great way to add lemon flavor without extra acidity. Speaking of acidity, though, I will add in the juice of one of these two lemons, or about 30 grams worth in total. Next I'll jump into the bowl and toss this marinade until it's mixed together and the thigh meat is all slathered up. Next I'll move this bowl over to the fridge to marinate for as little as 30 minutes, but up to 24 hours if you wanted to make this ahead. Now while that sits, let's make the fast, flavorful pita dough that I mentioned in the intro. For that, into my food processor I'll combine 350 grams of all-purpose flour, 7 grams of instant yeast, 5 grams of salt, 8 grams of sugar, and 15 grams of olive oil. Now the lid goes on and I'll pulse this about 5 times to mix everything together. Next I'll take 210 grams of a yeasty tasting beer and stream that in the food processor while it's running. By the way, the beer is in a saucepan because I needed to heat that up from fridge temperature to about 86-90F. Cold beer makes for a sluggish dough that isn't going to be very easy to stretch later on. Also, using beer over water helps mimic the flavor of a longer dough fermentation. This will make our 20 minute dough taste more like a 4 hour dough. At this point, what's in the food processor can technically be called a dough, but it's very shaggy and weak. So to build it in a little bit more strength, I'm going to flip this dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it for 2 minutes. My preferred move alternates between both hands and it's just a push with my palm and a squeeze. There's no perfect way to do this, by the way. Just give it some kind of elbow grease and you'll be linking up the gluten proteins making the dough stronger. 2 minutes later, you can see that this dough holds itself together pretty well when I give it a firm pinch and a tug. So I'll call it strong enough. Next I'll grab my scale and cut this dough down into 4 pieces that are about 150 grams each. Ooh, 150, nailed it. Next I'm going to give this dough a light pre-shape to bring it from an incongruent clod into more of a ball shape. This will make rolling it out into a pita much easier. And once I've got 4 of these doughs rolled up into balls, I'm going to cover them with a damp paper towel and let them rest and rise for 15 minutes while I quickly bust out the condiments for this souvlaki pita wrap. First up is the herby bright tzatziki sauce. To make it, I'll grab one large cucumber and grate it on the largest hulled sides of my box grater. If you don't have a box grater, by the way, you could just roughly chop or mince the cucumber until it's broken down into a cucumber pulp similar to this stuff here. Ugh, look how wet that is. We definitely need to sop that up. Next I'm going to drop these grated cucumbers onto a multi-layered paper towel setup, bundle it up, and then squeeze out the water. Most people don't pay attention to this and then their tzatziki is loose, watery, and much less flavorful than it should be. The final cucumber should be at least as dry as mine are here. Next I'm going to grab the grated, drained cucumbers and throw them into a high-sided container. Then I'll top with 200 grams of plain Greek yogurt, then 75 grams of mayo, one minced garlic clove, 5 grams of salt, 5 grams of chopped fresh dill, then a half of a lemon's worth of juice, or about 15 to 20 grams. To finish, I'll just stir this together until everything is homogenous. And that's all it takes to make one of the most flavorful, fresh-tasting sauces of all time. It's good on all grilled meats too, not just chicken. Try it with steak or even grilled shrimp. Mmm. Bro. Adding mayonnaise to this is the pro move, by the way. Most people make this sauce with just yogurt, and then it's too thin and too sour, and you don't get that creamy, unctuous mouthfeel that you get from adding the fat with the mayonnaise. The second condiment is a little tomato-onion relish-y thing. To make it, I'll slice and dice two medium tomatoes. It's not quite tomato season in St. Louis yet, so these are regular old store-bought slicers. And I'm fine with it, actually, because we mainly want the tomato just for its juicy texture and mild acidity. I mean, bonus points for super fresh, jammy, in-season tomatoes, but this sandwich is still gonna thrive without them. Next, I'll take half a red onion and dice it quite small. I want the flavor a lot more than I want the crunchy, spicy texture. Lastly, I'll add in 20 grams or a half bunch's worth of parsley that I've chopped, then I'll mix everything together. By the way, there's no salt here because it would draw water out of the onion and tomato, making the condiment too wet, and as a result, making the sandwich too wet. Back to the pita. It's been about 15 minutes, and now this dough is rested and ready to be rolled out, and that part's actually super easy to do. I'll just lightly flour my cutting board, then I'll grab one of my pita doughs, drop it down, flatten it a little bit with my palm, then I'll grab a rolling pin and just roll it out until it's about eight inches across. The only real technique here that you need to keep in mind is that if the pita starts to stick to the pin, either flip it over or turn it 90 degrees and add a little bit more flour to keep it riding free and off your roller. Now, while I finish rolling this out, I'm going to take a quick second to thank AG1 for sponsoring this video. One day recently, I woke up and I was 36 years old. Yikes. For some reason, I just don't have the focus and energy that I used to have when I was in my 20s. So one thing that I drink almost every day to keep things ripping is AG1. There's over 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients in AG1, and they have a ton of research health benefits, like supporting healthy aging, gut health, and replenishing micronutrients. What I've noticed personally is that AG1 helps improve my focus and it gives me a little boost of energy so I don't have to be drinking coffee all day. That energy comes from ingredients like rhodiola, magnesium, and B vitamins. I should also mention that when I travel, I always pack these AG1 travel packs because when I'm out there in the world, eating a balanced, healthy diet isn't that easy and it's not really a top priority. Eating more cow soyas. Right now, if you use my link down in the description, you can get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3 K2 drops, plus five of those travel packs that I just mentioned with your first purchase. And once I've got my pita rolled out to roughly eight inches across and about a quarter of an inch thick, give or take, I'm going to stack them up on parchment paper so that I can bring them outside and drop on the grill in just a second. How about that chicken though? Well, I'm going to set this pita aside and finish that up. For that, I'm going to grab some wood grilling skewers that I've soaked in water for about 30 minutes or so. Then I'm going to take those thighs that I marinated earlier and stack 10 to 12 pieces onto those soaked skewers. Soaking the skewers, by the way, keeps them from turning to ash on the grill and getting stuck in the meat. Also, if you're wondering, hey Bri, can I just skip the dicing and skewering of this meat and just throw the whole thighs right on the grill? Yes, but you're going to lose out on some marinated surface area as well as some grillable surface area. So adjust your expectations. It's easier, but it's going to be less flavorful. All right, now that we've got the pitas rolled out and all of our meat sticked up, it's time to take them out to the grill. Out here, I've got my Webby ripping at 550F, so I'm going to lift the lid and hit the cast iron grates with a liberal amount of pan spray. This is critical to keep the mustardy chicken and the pita from sticking to the grates. Or if you don't like the idea of spraying aerosol right into the flames of your grill, brush an olive oiled paper towel on the grates instead. Next, I'm going to drop my marinated chicken onto the far side. In total, I've got six skewers worth going down. Then I'm going to drop my pita onto the other hot side and cook for about four minutes in total, or about two minutes per side. The bread part of this thing cooks super fast. We're more leaving it on the grill for four minutes to make sure that we get some really nice grill marks on either side. And after about two minutes, when I flip this over, you can see we've got some textbook grillage going on. From here, I'm going to let this rip on the backside to get a little char going on under there. And after four minutes in total, this backside is looking very pita-like. So I'll snatch it off and throw it under a towel while I cook the other three. Once I got pita one off, I'm going to come back and flip the skewers on the other side of this grill. Since I'm using thighs, I can cook these for as long as I want, basically. Like I said before, they are almost indestructible. So take your time and really make sure you're getting a char on every side. In the meantime, I'm going to drop another pita on the far side and cook it for four more minutes. And at the 15 to 20 minute mark, my last pita is ready to come off the grill, and so is my chicken. You can see that I got this chicken grilled hard on all sides and that pasty mustard marinade has turned into more of a lacquer on the outside. And once I get this food indoors, we can really start to appreciate how beautiful it is. The pita smells so epic, you guys. It's yeasty, it's a little bit smoky, it's very toasty, and even a little bit sweet. Now it's time to put it all together into a wrap. The first step here is to rip the chicken off the skewer and then give it a once over with my knife to break the one inch chunks down into roughly half inch ones. Huge chunks of chicken inside the pita would fall out. Next I'll scoop about eight ounces of that chicken onto my warmed pita. Then I'll top with three generous spoonfuls of my zippy tangy cucumber tzatziki. Behind that, I'll give two big drops of that tomato red onion relish to bring that fresh herbal edge. Then finally, I'll give this sandwich some heat with a handful of sliced pepperoncinis. Now to serve this, I'm going to wrap with a foil paper or a parchment to keep things contained. Then I'm going to rip open the end to expose one of the best first bites in human history. I want nothing more on a sunny warm day than to eat grilled meat swimming in a fresh cold yogurt sauce. It's creamy, it's salty, there's multiple types of acidity going on from the tzatziki sauce, the pepperoncini, and the chicken and the bread both bring their own type of grilled smoky flavor. Jesus. If you liked this video and the other videos that I make, but you're not subscribed, please take a quick second and hit that subscribe button and also turn on the bell for notifications. That'll help the channel be seen by other people like you who have great taste and like cool stuff. Now, let's eat this thing!