Greek Chicken Souvlaki Bowls

Hi everyone, yia sas, kekalos tersete to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today I'm going to be teaching you how to make my loaded Greek chicken souvlaki bowls. They're so good. They're perfect for a weeknight dinner. You can serve these to guests. This won't heat up the whole house because we're going to be cooking the chicken souvlaki skewers in the air fryer. But of course if you have somebody to grill for you, you can totally throw these on the grill. Let's get started. Okay so we're going to begin with the chicken. We're just going to marinate it really well and I'm using chicken thighs, boneless skinless chicken thighs here because they stay so juicy. Even if you overcook them by a little bit, they'll still be juicy. So you can definitely substitute chicken breast but you have to watch it very carefully when you're cooking it. So I'm doubling this recipe because these taste so good the next day. They're perfect for taking to work for lunch and things like that. So I have four, four and a half pounds of boneless skinless chicken thigh meat here. To it I'm going to add some olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. You can do vinegar instead. For the two pounds, which is what the recipe is written for, you need about a quarter of a cup of olive oil and a quarter cup of lemon juice but you can definitely add more if you like. Four garlic cloves. By the way I'll just be going over the recipe as if it was two pounds just to skip any confusion. Four garlic cloves that have been grated or you could add more for more flavor. One heaping tablespoon of dried oregano. Two teaspoons of salt. I also like to add some cumin powder to this. Three quarters of a teaspoon to one teaspoon for two pounds is enough. Then freshly cracked black pepper and some crushed red pepper flakes for heat. Mix that all up. Toss it all together so that way the chicken is coated and then I realized after I tossed it that I should have cut the chicken up into smaller pieces. So I just went ahead and I just roughly chopped them so that way they, you know, thread onto the skewers easily. You don't really need skewers for this. You could leave the chicken whole if you want to make it more simple but if you are threading it onto skewers you can cut it up like I did or you can double up the skewers if you'd like. I'll leave it up to you. Set that aside. You can do this step overnight and leave it in the refrigerator or 30 minutes on the counter is fine. We're going to move on to making the tzatziki now. I've made tzatziki so many times on the channel. Just grate a cucumber. I like to peel it and then grate it. Put it in the strainer and season it a little bit of salt to help those juices release and you want to make sure you get rid of all of those cucumber juices so that way your tzatziki is nice and thick. In another bowl go ahead and add some greek yogurt. I also like to add a little bit more richness with sour cream. This is a trick that my mom taught me and she adds plenty of sour cream to her yogurt when she's making tzatziki. Add as much as you like. Two to three garlic cloves that have been grated and a little bit of freshly cracked black pepper. Whisk that all up. Drain the juices from the cucumber and add the cucumber to the tzatziki. Mix it all up and you can chill this in the refrigerator while we get everything else prepared. So I'm also serving my bowls with some roasted potatoes. They're going to almost look like french fries but they're going to be so good and a little bit healthier because we're not deep frying. I have five to six russet potatoes here. I've already peeled them. I'm just going to rinse them in some cool water and then pat them dry and then I'll cut them into pieces like this. I'm never very precise but if you get them all around the same size they'll cook evenly so that's important. Put them in a bowl. Drizzle lots of olive oil on top. Season with salt, freshly cracked black pepper and lots of garlic powder for flavor. Toss it all up and then I like to transfer it into a baking tray. Try to get them all in one even layer and the oven is preheated to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. This is going to bake on the center rack for about 35 to 40 minutes or until they're golden and crisp all around and tender in the center. Try not to move them around. I don't even flip them over while they're baking because potatoes while they're roasting they tend to stick to the pan and if you try to mess with them you'll break them up. So I mix them up after they've sat at room temperature for like 10 minutes and they release really easily from the pan. Potatoes are ready. We're going to make the rice now. So I'm making my Mediterranean rice pilaf for these bowls. It's so good and comforting and everybody loves it. So I'm making a bigger batch of rice today. So I have four cups of rice here. This is Carolina rice that's just soaking in cold water. I'm going to drain the water out and then I'll heat my pot up over medium heat. Add some butter to it. Lots of butter about four tablespoons and I use salted butter for this but you can use unsalted butter. You can even use olive oil and then these vermicelli noodles also known as fide. I love to add these to my pilaf. I'm going to add them to the pot and just toast them in the butter until they're nice and golden. That just takes a few minutes so keep an eye on them. Mix it around so that way they don't burn. They do tend to cook really quickly. I'll add the rice that's been drained to the noodles. A little bit of fresh lemon juice, about a quarter of a cup for all this rice is perfect. You could add more or less. I'll leave it up to you. Season it with four teaspoons of salt, lots of freshly cracked black pepper and then for even more flavor I like to add chicken broth. So four cups of chicken broth are going in here. You can do this in water too if you like. Bring it to a boil. Once it starts to bubble, reduce the heat to a low. Put the lid on the pot and let this simmer for about 20 to 25 minutes. Fluff the rice up and that's it. The rice is also ready. Now it's time to cook our chicken. So before we do that I'm going to cut up the veggies that are going to go with it. So today I'm going to be using some zucchini, red onions and bell peppers. You can mix it up to use your favorite veggies for this. You can just do onions and bell peppers. You can add some tomatoes in here if you like. If you have eggplant that also works well in here. These are some of my favorites so I'm just going to cut them up into around the same size as the chicken and then I have these little bamboo skewers that I bought on Amazon because they fit in the air fryer. So go ahead and thread the chicken and the veggies onto the skewers. I like to put two to three pieces of chicken and then veggies enough so that way they fit onto the skewer. I'll put them on a baking tray and then once all of the veggies and this chicken is on the skewers, all that juice that's in the bowl that the chicken was marinating in, I'll pour it on top. I will also drizzle a little more olive oil on this and season with a little more salt. You can season the veggies ahead of time but then they become slippery when you're threading them on the skewer and that can become dangerous. So I just do it afterwards, just a little drizzle of olive oil and they'll get plenty of flavor that's already in the chicken. I'm going to preheat my air fryer to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and then I'll put as many skewers fit into the basket. So I can get about six in here. Try not to overcrowd it so that way they cook evenly and they get nice crunchy pieces on parts of the chicken. The souvlaki skewers are going to cook about six to seven minutes per side. It's best to use a digital meat thermometer to check the temperature so that way you don't overcook it. Once it registers 165 degrees Fahrenheit, it's ready. Take the skewers out of the air fryer and set them on either a baking tray or a platter and just keep cooking them as you need them. You don't have to make the whole batch. This is a great recipe to have just ready on hand. You can put all of your skewers onto a baking tray and keep it covered in plastic wrap in the refrigerator so you can use it for two days. They'll stay fresh the next day too and you can air fry them as you need them or grill them as you need them. And now it's time to put the bowls together. I just put lots of rice into a bowl. I'll put some chicken skewers on top of the rice right there on side. Lots of those roasted potatoes and that creamy tzatziki on the side. I also like to squeeze some lemon juice on top because it adds some more freshness. If I had parsley chopped up, I'd sprinkle some parsley on top and it's ready to serve. Okay so they're ready and everything smells so good. It's so comforting. I love this smell. Takes me back to my childhood. The chicken is so juicy. I love using chicken thigh meat you guys. If you like chicken breast, totally use that. Keep a close eye on it. I would definitely invest in a thermometer and an instant read digital thermometer. They're inexpensive. They last forever. You can find them on Amazon so I will put the link down below. That way you don't overcook meat especially chicken. If you're using chicken breast and you overcook it, it's going to be really dry and sometimes you want to reheat leftovers and each time you reheat it, the drier it gets. But the good thing about chicken thigh meat is it's very hard to cook it so much where it's dry. I guess you have to burn it to a crisp but it stays juicy and they're also very flavorful. Let me taste it because everything smells so good and the vegetables are perfectly cooked. Literally they take about 15 minutes in the air fryer. Can't beat that. Oh my goodness. That rice is lemony and fresh and buttery. The chicken is moist. I love grilled zucchini. Of course if you like tomatoes, you can throw some tomatoes on the skewers. I said eggplant before. Mushrooms are really good too. Halloumi cheese. If you want to do some vegetable skewers instead of threading them with the chicken, if you want to do just separate veggie skewers, thread them with halloumi cheese and you're going to thank me. So good. You know how sometimes when you cook zucchini in stews, it gets kind of watery and mushy? I love grilling it for that reason because it stays so good. It just doesn't get mushy. It's really good. It's perfectly cooked. The roasted potatoes, also delicious. I like to squeeze some lemon on top. If you want to keep this low carb, of course you can leave the rice out and maybe substitute some cauliflower rice. The chicken, like I said, you could substitute the chicken breast. If you want to make a bigger batch, I would recommend that you don't cook everything at once if you're not going to be serving it all because the skewers will keep fresh at least 24 hours in the fridge, maybe a little bit longer than that and then you can air fry them as you need them or you can grill them. I don't like to grill. I don't like to be outside in the heat with smoke coming at me from the grill. Most of the time it catches on fire and I have to manage that and I just, last time I did it was the last time. I just don't grill anymore so I use my air fryer or I cook on top of the stovetop or in the oven and I'll put the directions for all the ways to cook the chicken on the blog post. Instead of tzatziki sauce, you can use my tirocafteri dip, which is my spicy feta dip. I'm also about to share a feta and hot honey dip. So good. Stay tuned for that one. I hope you guys give this recipe a try. The recipes are all on the website as usual, DemetriusDishes.com. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all next time. Yia sas!