Shawarma-Spiced Grilled Chicken With Tahini-Yogurt Sauce

Made this yesterday (with about 3 hours of marinade), had more chicken marinating and grilled it again today. Big hit with the family. I erred on the sauce, as some others have, using Greek yogurt, which made for a very thick sauce, and added more spicing and sliced cucumber to the sauce. Will make again.

we put the chicken (thighs) on a big salad and thinned out the tahini yogurt sauce to use as a salad dressing....

This was delicious and a hit with my 20 year old home from college. Marinated for 5 hours and sheet pan baked for about 45 for bone in thighs. Matched with the Taverna salad and some naan and bam! Slam dunk!

To the folks who don't have the spices, go to the bulk spice section of your store and buy what you need instead of the big jars. Or look for a shawarma seasoning mix.

Made as written for Mothers’ Day weekend. I didn’t think the tahini flavor would come through but it did. Would leave out the allspice next time

Low effort, pretty good reward. Pleasant flavour, very moist meat. Thanks for giving the individual spices to blend; I had them all on hand. I used whole chicken legs and cooked them under the broiler: next time I'd try convection roasting them and just giving them a few minutes under the broiler at the end.

I've always got NY Shuk Shawarma seasoning in the pantry so I used 4t of that instead of mixing the spices. Did this with chicken thighs and otherwise followed the recipe exactly. It was really tasty and made enough for 2 dinners and a few lunches.

I’m an experienced griller and grill chicken thighs probably once a week with no sticking whatsoever. For this recipe, even with greasing my stainless steel grill grates with ample oil (not spray), the chicken stuck to them like crazy. It was a huge pain to clean. I’ve grilled yogurt-marinated chicken many times, so I’m not sure why this happened. The taste was okay, but certainly not worth the cleanup. I did a 24h marinade with boneless skinless thighs

I’d love to make this dish but would like to know if I can use fat free Greek yogurt? Will that work?

"Shawarma-spiced"? What does that mean? Shawarma is a method of cooking on a vertical spit, where the meat is sliced off as it becomes caramelized, that is, mostly end-pieces. Similar spices are use, common in Mid-Eastern cuisines, with regional differences, but there is no such thing as a "shawarma" spice mixture, and usually, marinades don't include yogurt. Tasty as it might be, this recipe misses the caramelized-essence of shawarma, and focuses on a cliche in terms of spice.

I smoke-grilled the chicken over charcoal for an added level of flavor

My kids and I all loved this! I got started late and only had time to marinate for an hour and a half, and it was still delicious and very tender.

Delicious & easy! I marinated the chicken for 24 hours & all the spices & flavors really came through. As some suggested, I did increase the spices by another half which was perfect & not over-powering. I also added a little cumin to the tahini-yogurt sauce. Really great & flavorful meal & definitely in the rotation.

I wish I'd read the other cooks' notes before trying this myself. I would have done it as a sheet pan roast in the oven instead of turning my grill surface into a charred mess with burnt-on marinade. I would also have done something different with the disappointingly bland tahini sauce. All in all, not the most successful recipe I've ever cooked out of NYT Cooking.

Was pretty yummy. Easy though needs to be marinated ahead of time .Baked at high temp. Too much yogurt/ tahini sauce - threw away some. It’s rather dry, so serve with juicy salad. Maybe yogurt tahini sauce would have been less thick if I had not used Greek yogurt.