Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki

Some of our regular readers will remember that in a previous post a couple of years ago we showed you how we made pork souvlaki (read here). Because it’s one of our favourite dishes, we just had to include it in our Dish of the Week series. The only difference this time around is that we didn’t use pork, but chicken and we bought the pitas (and didn’t make them ourselves).

With a camping weekend ahead (click here for our camping weekend), we decided souvlaki should be on the menu for the Friday evening. We prepared the chicken pieces at home the previous evening and bought fresh pitas from our local store. The only thing we had to do at our campsite was to make the tzatziki sauce (and of course to braai’ the chicken on the campfire). For those of you who love camping and don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking – this dish is for you!

Put it on the table:

We’re going to start by preparing the chicken marinade and then show you how easy it is to make your own delicious tzatziki sauce.

Preparing the chicken marinade:

Ingredients for Chicken Marinade

750g de-boned chicken pieces

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1½ tablespoon dried origanum (oregano)

salt & pepper, to taste

zest of one lemon

juice of two lemons

olive oil

Grate one lemon to obtain the zest and then squeeze the juice of two lemons.

Zest and juice of lemon

Mix the Dijon mustard, origanum, zest and juice of lemon in a glass bowl. Add an equal amount of olive oil to the lemon juice and mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mix all the ingredients together, except the chicken

With the chicken pieces in a ziploc bag, we poured the marinade over (it’s better this way when we drive to our campsite). We then placed the chicken in the fridge until we could cook it on the campfire the next evening.

Mix the chicken and marinade

Ready to take to our campsite

At our campsite we first made a fire and then prepared the tzatziki sauce.

You might recognise our campsite – yes, it’s Yellow Sands

Tzatziki sauce:

Ingredients for Tzatziki sauce

1 medium size cucumber, peeled and grated

2 garlic cloves, finely grated

¼ cup full cream yoghurt

50ml olive oil

1-2 tablespoons white/red wine vinegar

1-2 tablespoons fresh dill, chopped

salt & pepper, to taste

Finely chop the dill and add the finely grated garlic cloves to the dill.

Dill and grated garlic cloves

Grate the cucumber, add salt, wrap in a kitchen towel and squeeze it to get rid of most of the water. Place it in a separate bowl.

Grated cucumber in kitchen towel

Squeeze the cucumber to get rid of the water

Add the yoghurt to the cucumber, as well as the dill and garlic.

Add yoghurt, dill and garlic to the cucumber

Now add the remaining ingredients to the cucumber mixture, namely the olive oil, vinegar and salt and pepper. Mix well and keep aside.

Add olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper

Homemade tzatziki sauce

When the coals are ready, it’s time to braai the chicken. To make it easier to braai the chicken, thread the chicken pieces onto skewers and turn occasionally until the chicken is nicely coloured and cooked through. If you prefer, you can also heat the pitas on the fire for a minute or two.

Our campfire

Chicken pieces on skewers on the fire

Now it’s time to assemble the souvlaki. Thinly slice a red onion and two ripe tomatoes.

Gather all the ingredients to make the souvlaki

Put the onion and tomato on the pita first, followed by the chicken pieces. Then spoon enough tzatziki on top to complete the souvlaki.

Chicken Souvlaki with homemade tzatziki