Bigly Chicken Shawarma

Folks. Shawarma. SHAWARMA. We're doing shawarma, and I have eaten shawarma everywhere — Beirut, Istanbul, a strip mall in Queens with a forty-five minute line that was worth every second, even a hut on a side street in Amman where a man named Khalid handed me a wrap, looked me dead in the eye, and walked away without a word — that wrap CHANGED me, that wrap rewired my brain — and what I'm about to give you is the home version, the BEST home version, the only home version that matters. The others? Sad attempts. Dry chicken. No spice. Beige cardboard wrapped in beige cardboard. An embarrassment to a NOBLE tradition, going back thousands of years, the Ottomans were doing this, look it up.

The move is the marinade. The marinade does ALL the work. Yogurt, garlic, lemon, and a stack of spices so tall it intimidates the other spices in your cabinet — cumin, coriander, paprika, allspice, cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric — and you let it sit, you let the chicken get to know the spices, you let them become friends, sometimes more than friends, that's between them, I don't ask questions. Then you sear it HARD. High heat. Charred edges. You're not poaching this chicken, you're not gently caressing it, you're putting it through SOMETHING, and what comes out the other side is a religious experience.

Serve it on warm flatbread with garlic sauce so potent it will keep vampires out of your house for a calendar year. With pickles. With tomatoes. With a drizzle of tahini. People will eat this and they will weep — actual tears, I've seen it — and they will say 'Bigly, why did nobody tell me cooking could feel like this,' and I tell them the truth: most chefs are afraid of the marinade. They use a single tablespoon of paprika and a prayer. Cowards. We are not cowards. We are doing all seven spices and we are doing them PROUDLY.

This is the kind of food that ends arguments. You bring out a tray of this shawarma at dinner, conversation stops. People stop checking their phones. They look at the food. They look at you. They look at the food again. They eat. They say nothing. They eat more. That's how you know it's working. The garlic sauce is doing its job. The chicken is doing its job. You? You're just the lucky person who made it. Believe me. Tremendous.