The first Greek Chicken Souvlaki I ever cared about was grilled on a fishing boat. Not in a taverna. On the deck of a wooden caique tied up in the harbour at Skala Sykamineas, Lesvos, the night of the Panagia Gorgona feast.
I had wandered down from the chapel above the rocks because the music had started and the crowd was thicker than the village could hold. A fisherman named Manolis waved me over. He had set up a small charcoal grill on the deck of his boat, smoke drifting sideways across the dock, and he was feeding skewers off it as fast as he could load them.
The Night in Skala Sykamineas
Manolis had no marinade station. He had a bowl. Inside that bowl, olive oil from his cousin’s grove, the juice of a single lemon he cut on the deck with a paring knife, a fistful of dried rigani he kept in an old coffee tin, garlic he crushed with the flat of the same knife, salt, pepper.
The cubes of chicken had been sitting in it for maybe three hours by the time I showed up, which is honestly the upper limit before lemon starts wrecking the meat. He worked over coals that had burned down to a white powder. He turned the skewers every couple of minutes, no basting after the halfway mark, no sauce, no fuss.
When he handed me one wrapped in a piece of paper with a wedge of lemon, the crust on the edges of the cubes was almost black and the inside was still springy. I asked him what made his different from the souvlaki I had eaten in Athens. He shrugged and said the difference was that he had caught the lemon off his tree that morning. I am still not sure if he was joking.
What Greek Chicken Souvlaki Actually Is
Souvlaki gets its name from soúvla, the Medieval Greek word for skewer, and Greeks have been grilling meat on sticks for a very long time. There are portable clay souvlaki trays from Mycenae and Pylos, and stone grill holders from Santorini that predate 1600 BCE. Homer mentions spit-roasted meat in the Iliad. So this is not a new idea.
What is newer is the street-food version, the small cubes on a wooden skewer you eat walking around. That tradition spread out of Boeotia in central Greece after the Second World War, and exploded in the sixties when vendors started opening little souvlatzidika in cities. Pork was the default then and still is. Chicken is the second-half-of-the-twentieth-century cousin, but it uses the same marinade.
A few things worth knowing. Souvlaki is not gyros. Gyros is the rotating column of stacked, slow-roasted meat you see in the windows of late-night spots. Souvlaki is cubes on a stick. And the marinade should be five things. Olive oil, lemon, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper. If you see a recipe asking for cumin and paprika and coriander and yogurt, that is somebody else’s chicken. Yogurt belongs in the tzatziki.
What I Used
- 2 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into one inch cubes
- One-third cup good olive oil, ideally Greek
- 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus extra wedges for serving
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, optional but classic
- 5 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
- 2 tablespoons dried Greek oregano (rigani, not Italian)
- 1 and a half teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Recreating It Back Home
I cannot replicate the boat, obviously. I cannot replicate the harbour, the music, the smoke drifting over the water, the man cutting a lemon off a tree he can see from his deck. But the skewers themselves travel well.
The oregano matters more than people think. I get the rigani from a small Greek import shop in Pico-Robertson, the kind of place where the owner asks where you ate it before he sells it to you. Italian oregano gives the wrong note here. Mexican oregano gives you a different dish entirely. If all you can find is the supermarket jar, walk over to a Middle Eastern grocery instead and ask for Greek or Turkish oregano on the stem.
I use thighs. Breast goes from springy to chalky in about ninety seconds over high heat and there is no coming back from chalky.
Thighs forgive you. The fat melts down into the char and the edges crisp before the inside dries out.
The marinating window is short. Two hours minimum, four hours absolute maximum. The first time I tried this at home I left the chicken in for seven hours because I got distracted and went to a movie. The lemon juice had done its work. The texture came out mealy and stringy, like chicken that had been poached and then dried in a sock. Two to four. Do not test the upper end.
What Happens on the Grill
You want the cooking surface screaming hot. Charcoal that has burned down to white ash, or a cast iron grill pan that has been over high heat for a full five minutes and is starting to smoke. Anything less and the meat will release water before it sears, and that is the moment souvlaki becomes sad chicken stew on a stick.
When the skewers hit the surface the proteins on the outside of each cube seize and contract within seconds. The marinade clinging to the meat hisses and reduces. The garlic on the outside chars almost immediately, which is fine. That sweet burned-edge bitterness is part of the flavor. Inside the cubes the muscle fibers are still relaxed and the residual lemon juice is still working, slowly cooking inward.
By ten minutes you want a thermometer reading around 160 to 165, the outside should look almost too dark, and the inside should still give a little when you press it. Pull them. Sprinkle a final pinch of rigani over the hot meat so it blooms in the steam. A fresh squeeze of lemon. Rest three minutes, no longer.
Worth Knowing
Greeks eat souvlaki two ways. Wrapped in a warm pita with tzatziki, tomato, red onion, a few fries shoved in for good measure. Or kalamaki-style, which means straight off the skewer with a piece of bread and a lemon wedge, no sauce at all. The kalamaki version is what Manolis was making on his boat that night. It is the version I prefer at home, partly because I am lazy about pita, and partly because there is nothing between you and the meat.
I also do not bother with the red wine vinegar half the time. The recipe lists it as optional and it really is. The olive oil and lemon do the work. The vinegar adds a small sharpness on the back end, but I forget it more often than I remember it and nothing seems to suffer.
I have made this maybe forty times since I came back from Lesvos. Some nights the kitchen still smells right and some nights it does not, but the chicken is always good. Manolis would probably tell me his is better. He would probably be right.
Greek Chicken Souvlaki
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pat the chicken thighs dry with paper towels and trim off any large pieces of fat or sinew. Cut the meat into even 1 inch cubes so everything cooks at the same rate.
- In a large non-reactive bowl, whisk the olive oil, fresh lemon juice, red wine vinegar, crushed garlic, dried Greek oregano, salt and pepper until the marinade looks cloudy and emulsified.
- Add the chicken cubes and toss with your hands until every piece is slick and coated. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and no longer than 4 hours; any longer and the lemon will start to break down the meat.
- If you are using wooden skewers, drop them in a tray of water and let them soak for at least 30 minutes while the chicken marinates.
- Thread the chicken onto the skewers, packing about 5 to 6 cubes per skewer but leaving a hair of space between each piece so the heat can get in. Do not crowd the skewers or the meat will steam instead of sear.
- Light a charcoal grill and let it burn down to glowing coals with a light coat of white ash, or heat a cast-iron grill pan over high heat for a full 5 minutes until it is smoking. The grill must be very hot.
- Lay the skewers on the grill and cook undisturbed for 3 minutes, then turn with tongs. Continue turning every 2 to 3 minutes, basting once or twice with any leftover marinade in the first half of cooking only.
- Grill for a total of 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges of the cubes are charred and crusty and the inside reads 165 F on an instant-read thermometer. The chicken should still feel springy, not stiff.
- Transfer the skewers to a warm platter, sprinkle with a final pinch of dried oregano and a fresh squeeze of lemon, and let rest for 3 minutes so the juices settle back into the meat.
- Serve hot off the skewer with warm pita, tzatziki, sliced tomato and red onion, and extra lemon wedges on the side.