Perfect Shawarma: Takeout vs Pro Chef

Whoo. That [beeb] spicy.

Oh God. Yeah.

Taking on takeout shawarma.

Let's see what's going on here.

Wow. This one's hefty.

Alright, so today

we're going to go look at chicken shawarma.

The word shawarma means turning.

And that's why when you go to those restaurants,

you'll see the meat turning on a spit

and it gets really nice crust on the outside

and moist on the inside.

Shawarma could be all types of different types of meat,

but today we're doing chicken.

We're going to taste four different shawarmas

from all over the city.

And then we're gonna go ahead and create our own

perfect shawarma here in the test kitchen.

For the first one, super basic chicken, lettuce, and tomato.

This is a pretty famous place called Halal Guys.

And everybody loves the Halal Guys. This is great stuff.

This one is served in a pita bread

and then all the sauce come on the side.

This is pretty famous white sauce here. Okay.

You fight for these white sauce. All right.

Now I'd like to put a little bit of the hot sauce,

but be careful because it's spicy.

That's how I remember it.

This type of chicken, I'm not really a big fan of,

you know, it's kind of big batch cooking.

You know what I mean?

We're gonna take our time

and make sure we have great seasoning.

Try to get as much color, as much char on my chicken.

The thing that saves this pita is,

the sauces obviously.

It's kind of a mayo-based and then the hot sauce itself.

This next one is pretty much the traditional way.

Very wide open pita bread. The chicken's been marinated.

The color, the redness from paprika

and chili powder, it looks like.

And it also comes with tahini sauce on the side here.

Tahini is Sesame seeds has been slowly roasted and it's

emulsified a little bit.

Elbow out.

The tahini keeps it moist.

The pickles are great. Gives it that acidity.

The tomatoes are fresh.

Yeah, but they use chicken breasts.

I will use chicken thighs.

It stays a little bit moist

and it has a little bit more deeper flavor

I think, you know.

Oh, this one is nice.

I love the pita bread on this.

It seems like it's made from scratch

and the chicken has a nice char to it.

I don't see any sauce. So we'll see how this tastes.

Mmm. They use chicken thighs.

The meat is super tender. Has more of a warm spice profile.

Maybe a little bit of coriander, cumin.

That's a lot of spices in there, man.

You probably don't need the sauce

really to tell you the truth.

The pickles have a little bit of liquid in them.

That's where the moisture comes in too.

But it would be nice to put a little bit of white sauce,

a little bit of a red sauce on here.

Woo. This is nice.

I love the color of this bread right here.

See that the contrast?

Now it seems like it's one of those fresh joints.

You put it on the griddle, it puffs up,

you grab it and you slice it open and then you stuff it.

Fits right in your hand, you can just go right into.

Wow. Super nice.

Very tender. Chicken is seasoned really well.

I see lettuce, cucumber, tomato in here

and then the chicken looks like it's chicken thighs.

As part of the toppings also for a shawarma

you'll find different types of pickles.

They're like banana peppers.

Oh, this is fire.

Wow. This one, this was my favorite. Mmm.

Let me get our spices first. Right?

You're going to want to use a warm spice blend

to mimic a shawarma.

And you want that nice deep red color also.

So you got to make sure paprika is in the play.

You got to use a lot of these Mediterranean spices.

Cumin, whole nutmeg.

Yes. Next we're going to go ahead

and grab chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts.

I think it'll hold the flavor more.

It'll stay moist. And I like dark meat anyways.

Yogurt for our marinade, for the chicken,

but also for our sauces.

These look great, look at these great looking pita breads.

As part of the topics also for shawarma

you'll find different types of pickles,

banana peppers, yes. We need that.

Let me grab a little bit of the harissa paste for spice,

also for the red sauce. All right?

The Farmer's Market came to us. No I'm just kidding.

I'm going to use the Persian cubes

cause I like to snap on these.

Some shredded cabbage for color and flavor.

I like red onions for Mediterranean dish.

There's some iceberg lettuce, a couple of lemons and

a couple of tomatoes for our garnish.

That's it.

To create flavor.

We need a lot of ingredients. Okay.

What I'm going to do first

is I'm going to season the chicken itself.

Sometimes if you season the marinade

the salt level doesn't really get into the chicken.

So I like to do this first.

So now we're going to get right into the marinade.

Yogurt helps to tenderize meats.

It gives it that fat that it needs.

And when you hit it on the grill,

it gives it a nice flavorful crust.

All right, dope.

So we're going to start building the spice blend.

All right. We're going to put our stuff in a spice grinder.

I basically eyeball the [beep].

Cause that's how I cook. Right?

Cumin seed, cardamom. All of these kinds of warming spices.

Aleppo pepper.

Gonna give it that Mediterranean vibes.

I like the flavor of all spice, but you can use cinnamon.

I'm going to put a lot of sweet paprika

because that's where that red color is going to come from.

Going into the spice blender.

Smells great already.

And add a little bit of olive oil.

Kind of get it loose a little bit.

A little bit of lemon zest. One juice of lemon.

Chicken and citrus really go well together.

We're also gonna to put a little bit

of that red wine vinegar in there too, for the acidity.

And then I'm just going to micro plane

the whole nutmeg to it.

And add a little bit of a grated garlic in here

Two fresh garlic.

Garlic is a prominent flavor profile

for these types of dishes.

It's very middle Eastern to marinade meats in yogurt.

When I do marinades, I like to do slices of onions,

mix it in with the chicken and then throw on the grill.

It gives it a nice char on the onions,

have this thing married in the fridge.

And then we'll go ahead and cook it up later on

and make our shawarma.

Ah [beep]. Okay.

We're going to go ahead and get into our acostumar,

which are our sauces.

First we're going to make a yogurt garlic sauce.

when they made it at Halal Guys,

said some mayo-based with egg in it.

So, turn it up a notch. Yeah, there we go.

I'm going to also add a little bit of lemon juice.

Gives it that acidity that it needs.

I'm also going to dice a little bit of these cucumbers

just to add a little texture.

Keeps a nice and fresh. Couple of sprigs of fresh parsley.

I feel like Julia Child. And there we go.

I'm not 67 though.

We'll add a bit of fresh grated garlic in there.

I like having the same flavor profiles throughout our dish.

And I loosen this up a little bit.

A little salt and pepper.

It's my own take on a white sauce.

So tahini is super simple,

but you want to loosen it up just a little bit

with some water.

I'm gonna hit it with just a little bit of salt

and a little bit of black pepper, some crushed garlic,

and then a little bit of lemon juice.

That's it. It adds a nice roasted Sesame flavor to it.

Garlic, lemon. Amazing.

Next one we're gonna get into is our spicy sauce.

Harissa usually comes in a tube

or it comes in a container like this.

A little bit of a tomato paste

just to give it some of that body.

And I'll loosen it up with some water.

We're going to add a little bit of lemon juice

and then I'm gonna taste.

[beep], [beep]

You gotta make sure you gotta use fresh veggies.

It gives it a nice balance between those warm spices.

Tuck your thumb in. Don't cut your finger.

Sometimes it doesn't grow back. Okay?

The Persian cucumber, I feel like it's a lot sturdier

and has a better snap to it too.

We gonna do some tomatoes here that we have.

I want to see the tomato. Okay?

I don't want it to get lost.

And then red onion. And for this one,

I'm just going to slice them down the row.

Just like we did for our marinade.

You wanna kind of soak these onions a little bit.

It takes that bitterness off.

That's it for fresh vegetables.

This will give the freshness that we're looking for

for the shawarma.

What I like the most is these pickled turnips.

Amazing. I wanna put a little bit of acidity

in our dish today.

They've been sitting in this pickle for a minute man.

This [beep] color.

Oh God. Yeah. That's sour. Holy [beep].

Wow. No sugar at all.

I'm gonna put just a little bit. Right?

We're gonna to give them a little nice dice

since they already kind of uniformly cut it for us.

Wow. Look at that color though. Radioactive almost.

And then I really, really enjoy banana peppers.

Let's just try it.

Ooh. All right.

So we're just going to pull a little bit. All right.

It looks almost alien like. Look at that thing.

It's not Starbucks kids. Don't trip.

The chicken's been marinated

for about two or three hours now.

Just want to hit it,

just with a little bit of salt and pepper. Okay?

I'm always been taught by my chefs

to make sure that you layer your seasoning.

All right. Cool.

You know, some people don't have a nice grill

or broiler at their crib.

So we're going to use this handy-dandy machine.

It's called a Searzall. Is made by a guy named Dave Arnold.

And it's basically, you can sear something

at a thousand degrees in your house without burning it down.

So like this we're going to give the chicken color.

To mimic the turning

and the roasting on the meat on the spit.

Cause we don't have one. All right.

So we're using this [beep]. Okay. You unlocked the joint.

You turn this joint on and then

whatever problems you have in your life, it's got to go.

The Searzall will take care of it. Okay?

[smooth music]

All the chickens done.

So once we seared the chicken,

we're going to go ahead and put in the 400 degree oven

that will not only cook the chicken in the inside,

but it will keep it moist.

Oh yeah. Ooh, smell great, man.

We just gonna do a rough dice on these. Okay?

Whew. Perfect cook on that.

A little oil on our griddle here.

And now we're just going to get in the griddle.

Just to give it a little bit more crust

and encapsulate all these flavors together.

We've got a nice pita bread. Toast this up a little bit.

We're gonna dress some of our fresh vegetables

a little bit. All right.

A little olive oil,

just to make sure that every level

of our dish has seasoning.

Boom, boom.

Woo. Open this up and put lettuce in the bottom

with a little bit of cabbage.

I'm going to hit it with the white sauce tahini.

And just a dollop of this hot sauce. All right?

Poop, poop. Our chicken.

You go back to shredded cabbage,

lettuce, cucumbers, little bit of onions,

pickles, tomatoes.

And what we're going to do

is we're gonna add our sauces right on top. Okay?

White sauce and my mouth is salivating.

Tahini, red sauce. Boom.

I'm gonna finish with olive oil. All right?

And wrap this baby up.

Boom.

Unkle Harold's shawarma, baby. $9.50. Maybe $10.

All right, cool.

Yeah. Now we have my shawarma here,

and then there's the shawarma that I liked from earlier.

Let's go ahead and taste them.

Is a good size shawarma. Right?

Somebody else made this. Doesn't have the same love.

The chicken is not caramelized like it was earlier

and there's not enough cornichos in here.

You see it's all like one pickle.

Maybe I'll eat from the back.

Yeah, it's all down here.

I want to know what kind of pitta it is

because it stays together

even though I bit off on both ends.

The chicken is flavored well, really good shawarma. Awesome.

Mmm. What I like about my shawarma is the layers.

Crunch from the cucumbers, shredded cabbage, the pickles.

There's texture but there's also acidity there.

Having three different sauces.

All those things come into play.

And when you take a bite into something it's not monotonous

and it's something you want to make again.

In the front is a little bit of acidity

from the lemon and the yogurt.

The back end is spices. Paprika, cardamom, allspice.

Wow. That's a great marinade, really good marinate.

But I think whatever pita bread this is,

is the best one for a shawarma.

It's structurally built.

And this one is already like, falling apart.

I would take our chicken over theirs.

It's key to give it that nice char on there,

cause if you have that,

it'll bring up the meat a little bit more.

A lot of that mild reaction, all of that,

like charring flavor. I mean,

we could have done it in a pan, you know,

and really gotten the same effect.

That was just for show man, tell you the truth.

Yeah. It's always good to order it.

If you don't have the time

and you have the money to buy it, but making it on your own

creating techniques, taking a time to really

put it together with your own hands.

I think it's the best way to do it.

Tasty, tasty shawarma.

I'll pay $14 for this, word.

So stay focused. Keep your head down.

Keep grinding. I see at the top.

South Bronx all day. Peace.

[beep] So that's what I'm talking about. Watch the mic.

It's gonna [beep] burn.