Bring restaurant-style chicken shawarma home with this easy Middle Eastern-inspired sheet pan dinner of marinated, roasted chicken thighs and cauliflower.

Trying to find dinners that everyone in my family will eat seems to only be getting harder. The lastest blow? My daughter announced that, for the time being, she’s avoiding dairy. There goes pizza night!

Happily, on our family trip to Israel (now just over a year ago), we discovered a new food that we all would be willing to eat any day of the week – and I think, in Israel, we did eat it practically every day: chicken shawarma. In Israel, shawarma is everywhere. You’ve probably enjoyed it here in the States at your favorite Middle Eastern restaurant. A Turkish word meaning “something that turns or spins, shawarma is a reference to the rotating, vertical spit on which a seasoned meat, such as lamb, turkey, or chicken, is lovingly slow-roasted for hours.

When you order shawarma at an Israeli restaurant, the waiter shaves off slices from the rotating cone of meat and piles it high on a fluffy round of pita alongside a fresh chopped salad, some pickles and a creamy tahini or yogurt-based sauce. Israelis eat shawarma and salad stuffed into pita as street food or dig into a whole platter, with a side of fries, when sitting at a restaurant – either way, you can’t go wrong.

While I can’t recreate the delight of a big piece of meat rotating on a spit, I have discovered a way to bring the big flavors and juicy, tender meat of shawarma into my kitchen – and it is way easier than you think.

I start with boneless, skinless chicken thighs – a quick-cooking and flavorful cut. (Thighs are fattier than breasts, and for oven-roasting, as we are doing here, that extra fat is crucial to prevent the meat from drying out.) Then I marinate the meat in my homemade shawarma spice mix and lemon juice. I do this part in the morning or even the night before to save time and to make sure my chicken absorbs all the flavors of the marinade.

Finally, I roast the chicken on a sheet pan with a head of caulflower – one of the Middle East’s favorite vegetables – for a quick and easy dinner that won’t leave me with a sink full of dishes at the end of the night. While the chicken is cooking, I whip up a quick tahini sauce in my food processor. My tahini sauce recipe, which I include below, makes a lot and it will last for a few weeks in the fridge. So usually it is enough sauce for two or even three shawarma dinners – saving me even more time. For a fun twist, I sometimes add fresh herbs to the sauce, which give it a pretty green hue.

While the roasted cauliflower provides enough vegetable content to assuage my mom guilt, I usually also make a quick chopped salad, Israel-style, of diced cucumber, tomato and red onion tossed with lemon juice and olive oil. This salad is such a favorite with my family that I almost always have the ingredients on hand. Seedless mini cucumbers work especially well here. And while January is not exactly tomato season, I have found that the tomatoes-on-the-vine or grape tomatoes, that you can find year-round at the grocery store are good enough for these purposes.

Add some store-bought or homemade pita bread, or a side of rice, if that is your preference, and you have a crowd-pleasing family dinner that is as good, if not better, than any Middle Eastern take-out. As a side note: if you wanted to make this meal vegetarian, just omit the chicken and make extra cauliflower. Or try a mix of cauliflower and eggplant. That would be amazing!

Do you like to make sheet pan dinners? Do you find them especially easy or convenient? What are some of your favorites? Drop me a comment or an email and let me know!

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Sheet Pan Chicken and Cauliflower Shawarma

Ingredients

Shawarma Spice
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons coriander
• 2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Chicken and cauliflower
• 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 5-6 TB extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
Tahini Sauce
• 3/4 cup tahini
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup fresh green herbs, such as cilantro, mint or flat-leaf parsley (optional)

Instructions

1. Make shawarma spice by whisking together all ingredients. Set aside.
2. Marinate the chicken: In a small bowl, whisk together 2 TB of the shawarma spice, honey, and lemon juice. While whisking, slowly pour in 3 TB of the oil in a steady stream. Place the chicken in a glass baking dish. Pour the marinade over the chicken and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to overnight.
3. When ready to cook the chicken, preheat the oven to 425.
4. Toss the cauliflower with 1 to 2 TB of the oil and 1 TB of the shawarma spice.
5. Arrange the cauliflower and chicken on a sheet pan and place in the preheated oven. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
6. While the chicken is cooking, make the tahini sauce. Place all of the ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse a few times until the mixture forms a paste. With the motor running, slowly pour in 1/2 cup water and blend until the sauce is lighter in color and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. If the mixture is still quite thick, which will depend on the consistency of your tahini, add up to an additional 1/4 cup of water and process until the mixture is completely smooth and thin enough to drizzle. (Tahini sauce will keep in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.)
7. Check chicken after 20-25 minutes. If the internal temperature is at least 160 degrees, remove the chicken and allow it to rest. Keep the cauliflower in for an additional 10 minutes whiel the chicken is resting.
8. To serve, slice the chicken against the grain. Drizzle the tahini sauce over the chicken and cauliflower and serve with pita or rice. An Israeli salad of diced cucumber, tomato and red onion makes a nice accompaniment.

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