Pull-Apart Spanakopita & Chicken Sliders

Hi everyone, yasas, kekalo sejpeteh to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today we're going to be making pull-apart chicken and spanakopita sliders. These are heavenly. They're so good. They're perfect for a party, a game day party, if you're doing a holiday party and you want to serve a delicious appetizer, if you want to make them for a kid's birthday party. They are a crowd pleaser and they are very simple to make. They have a combination of chicken and a spinach and feta filling that tastes just like spanakopita. And I know you guys love spanakopita as much as I do because anytime I have a spinach and feta recipe, it goes wild on the blog and on here. So I'm bringing another version of a spanakopita type recipe to you because I think you're going to love it as much as I do. Let's get started. Okay, we're going to begin by making the spanakopita filling. So I have an onion here, a medium-sized onion is what you need. Finely chop that and add it to a skillet with a little bit of olive oil and cook this over medium heat until it's nice and soft and golden. That's going to take about eight minutes. Next we'll add three garlic cloves that have been grated and this is just going to warm through for a couple seconds until it's fragrant. If you overcook garlic or if you cook it on high heat, especially when it's grated, it'll get burnt and bitter and then you're going to have to throw everything out. So once you start to smell it, that's all it needs. I have six scallions that I've thinly sliced all the way down to the white parts. They're going to go in and I'm just going to cook them over medium heat for about one to two minutes until they soften. And over here I have a pound of baby spinach leaves. These are already washed and dried. I'll add them in in several batches. Each time I add a batch, I'll season it with a little bit of salt and freshly cracked black pepper. I'll also turn the heat on medium-high so that way the spinach wilts down and all of the juices that it releases will evaporate and our mixture won't be too soupy. So once everything is nice and wilted, we're just going to take it off of the heat. I'll just turn the heat off, mix everything all together, and I'll add a block of cream cheese. This is an eight-ounce block. My recipe originally called for six ounces, but here in America, cream cheese is sold in eight-ounce packets. I'm just going to put the whole thing in. It's going to tie the mixture together and it's even going to make it less watery and also really creamy. Just mix the cream cheese in until it's melted. Again, this is off of the heat, so whatever residual heat is in the pan is going to help the cream cheese melt a little bit. Before I added the cream cheese, I forgot to mention that I added a heaping teaspoon of dried dill. If you have fresh dill, you could do about a quarter cup of it. Just finely chop it and add it in. Once the cream cheese is melted and incorporated, just take the pan off of the heat, and then we're going to add a block of feta cheese in here. We need about 300 grams or 11 ounces of feta, really good quality feta. I love using sheep's milk, but use whatever you can find. Just don't use those already crumbled up pieces that are sold in the supermarket because it tastes horrible. Just crumble it yourself over the spinach mixture like I'm doing here. Mix it all together, give it a taste, and you can add some more salt and pepper if it's needed at this point, but set it aside while we prepare everything else now. You can get some help with a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store with this step. Like I did, I just bought a rotisserie chicken because it's just going to make life easy, and I just warmed it up a little bit before I begin to shred it. You just want to get all of the meat off of it and put it in a big bowl. If you're not using an already store-bought rotisserie chicken, you can use your favorite cut of chicken. Breast works for this, thigh meat, whatever you want. Just roast it yourself for about 25-30 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Drizzle it with a little bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper until it's fully cooked, and then once it cools, you can just shred it up like I'm doing in a big bowl. I'm going to season it with a little bit of salt, and I love adding some balsamic glaze over this. It just flavors the chicken really well. Toss everything all together and set it aside. You can use some plain shredded mozzarella for this, but I love the flavor of Gruyere cheese. It reminds me of Kefalograviera, which is my favorite cheese that's sold in New York, which I can barely get over here unless I order it online, and it's everywhere in Greece, and I love it because it's nutty and it's also really creamy. It tastes a little bit like Parmigiano-Reggiano, but I think it's better. So the closest I can get to this is a Gruyere cheese, and I'm just going to shred a little bit and mix it with the mozzarella cheese so we can have more depth of flavor. Now we're going to put the sliders together. So I have these Hawaiian rolls here that I bought from the supermarket. I'm just going to slice the rolls in half horizontally without separating them. If you separate them, then you have to slice each and every roll, and they're also not going to sit evenly later on once you put the top on over the filling. Just slice them in half and put the bottom part of the rolls in a 9 by 13 inch baking pan, spread that delicious spanakopita filling over them, and you're going to have some leftover unless you want to really go heavy with it and have it seeping out, which is not a bad idea because once this bakes, you could use whatever's leftover just for snacking. It's so delicious, but I'll save mine for another recipe. And then I'm going to top it with the chicken that I've shredded. And then finally, the mozzarella and Gruyere cheese is going to go on top. I have leftovers of the cheese, the chicken, and the spinach and feta mixture, which I'll just keep in my refrigerator for another recipe. And then we're going to place the top layer of the rolls over the cheese, press it down a little bit, and we're going to make the topping for the rolls. So I have some melted butter over here. I like to use salted butter because it has more flavor. If you only have unsalted butter, you can use that and add a little pinch of salt to it, or you can use olive oil. I'll leave it up to you, but it's about three tablespoons of salted butter that I'm using. To it, I'll add half a teaspoon of granulated garlic powder and a heaping teaspoon of dried oregano. Just whisk that all up and then brush it over the tops of the rolls. I like to also cover it with aluminum foil. My oven is preheated to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. These are going to bake covered for 20 minutes, and then I'll uncover them and bake them for five minutes longer until everything is bubbly and golden on the top. It looks so delicious. And that's it. The waiting is over. It is time to serve these. Once they come out of the oven, let them sit a little bit, so that way they're easy to handle and the filling is not so piping hot. You can definitely leave the chicken out of these and just make them vegetarian with just the spinach and cheese filling. They'll be so delicious that way. But adding the chicken in there just turns it into a kind of like a meal, or definitely a meal. It's just so good. Time for the taste test. So good. That garlicky, buttery topping on the bread just gives it so much more flavor. The filling is cheesy and creamy, and then you have little bits of chicken in there for protein. It's heavenly. I think you guys are going to love this one. You can head on over to the website to print the recipe out. If you want to learn how to make a spicy feta and chicken version of this, those are also sliders. Click over here and I will see you right over there. Yassas. Oh my God.