Chicken Souvlaki Kebabs with Tzatziki Sauce

Well, it’s no fun to post your failures, but my culinary endeavors don’t always go, ah, according to plan.

Growing up, when mom served a whole roast chicken, everyone attacked the thighs, legs, and wings, leaving the the breast til the end because it was so dry. But once I got older and learned about nutrition (innocence is bliss!), I thought, “oh fine! Breast is okaaay, I guess.” 

When I saw these gorgeous kebab from The Iron You using breast meat, I thought, “this chicken breast recipe looks pretty awesome.” But, alas, this was a big epic fail my first time around. The recipe itself wasn’t the problem. It was the fact that I was too lazy to take out my grill and grill the darn chicken. Instead I set it to broil. According to the recipe, one broils for a few minutes and ta-da, you get nice grilled chicken.

Well, I broiled and nothing happened; when I peeked in the oven, I saw raw chicken still. Thus, I broiled some more… and more… and more….but I still saw pink. Finally, after 40 minutes, I got nice looking golden chicken skewers.

Unfortunately, it’s dry as heck. This means I got to eat very dry chicken for a whole week’s worth of dinners. Yay. And our apartment was like a sauna.

Alright, so it wan’t that bad. But it’s not great. And I want great food. Which means food with fat, of course.

Anyways, I did it again with thighs this time and it turned out infinitely better. I even jazzed it up with vegetables, so I could feel good about myself. So, take heart if your recipes don’t work the first time around – worst comes to worst, you just eat dry chicken for a while and try again. 

And learn from me, folks: don’t broil your chicken breast for 40 minutes unless you like eating cardboard. 

Chicken Souvlaki Kebabs with Tzatziki Sauce

Ingredients 
CHICKEN KEBAB
1 lb chicken thighs, cut into chunks
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
Ground black pepper to taste
1 red bell pepper, cut
1 green bell pepper, cut
1 red onion, cut

TZATZIKI SAUCE
1 container (6 oz) plain Greek yogurt
1 small cucumber, peeled and grated
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoon fresh mint, finely chopped

Directions
In a small bowl stir olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt and black pepper. Add chicken and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours.

Make tzatziki sauce by combining all ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.

Soak skewers in water for 5 minutes. Remove chicken chunks from the marinade and skewer onto bamboo sticks, alternating with your red, green peppers and red onion slices

Heat a grill to medium-high or broil in oven. Grill the chicken kebabs, until cooked through and nicely browned on all sides and chicken is no longer pink in the center, about 8 minutes per side. Serve with tzatziki sauce.