Read more: The Best Greek Chicken Marinade Can I Use Chicken Breasts or Thighs? The chicken wasn’t tough and was packed with flavor! Phi recommends marinating the chicken for 20 minutes up to an hour, but I let mine go overnight and it was just fine. Top with a few slices of chicken, tomato, and red onion, then roll up and dig in! Warm the pita in the microwave or toaster oven and slather with the cucumber sauce for the gyros. Add the cucumber to a bowl and stir in the rest of the ingredients. To make the easy tzatziki sauce, grate the cucumber and then press between paper towels to wring out the excess moisture. Marinate for a minimum of 30 minutes before cooking in an oiled pan over medium-high heat. Mix together the lemon juice, yogurt, and sea salt in a large bowl, and place chicken in marinade. Plus, I found the pita available in whole wheat, which gives this recipe another healthy high five.
I found this video helpful in knowing how to roll the pita with the parchment wrapper. It’s soft, puffy, and lays flat and doesn’t have that hollow inside for stuffing. I use the Greek style of pita bread for this recipe. The amount of garlic in this recipe is our family’s favorite, but vary the amount of garlic to your liking. It’s a simple cucumber sauce made with fresh dill, red wine vinegar, Greek yogurt, and garlic. While it does take us out of the 5-ingredient category, the tzatziki sauce is another simple recipe to prepare. Like buttermilk, the yogurt sauce tenderizes the chicken for a juicier bite after cooking. I fudged the sea salt and made my own with just a pinch of oregano and a bit of garlic powder, but you could certainly use a store-bought brand or even Italian seasoning sprinkled into kosher salt. The marinade for these chicken tenders is very easy and calls for Greek yogurt, lemon juice, and Mediterranean-spiced sea salt. The notion of marinating chicken in yogurt and Mediterranean spiced sea salt led my mind to Greek food, and straight to one of my favorite sandwiches that work for lunch or dinner: chicken gyros with an addition of one of my favorite sauces, creamy yogurt tzatziki. Like many in her cookbook, her recipes are complete on their own, or like her yogurt chicken tenders recipe, can become the starting block for easy to make meals. I finally settled on Phi’s recipe for Marinated Yogurt Lemon Chicken. What you won’t find is a lot of pre-packaged short cut foods as found on the web and elsewhere. You will find a whole lot of variety, surprisingly so considering each recipe has only 5 ingredients. A cookbook with 105 5-ingredient recipes that put seasonal, fresh ingredients at the forefront.
Sweet Phi’s popular blog series is now a cookbook. When I first heard of Phi’s 5-ingredient recipe series on her blog where she created recipes that were sweet, savory and everything in between with just 5 simple ingredients, I thought it was stunningly brilliant. The inspiration for these Greek chicken gyro sandwiches came from my talented friend Philia Kelnhover of the food blog Sweet Phi, and her cookbook Fast & Easy Five-Ingredient Recipes: A Cookbook for Busy People by Philia Kelnhofer. And it’s totally flavorful thanks to its Mediterranean roots. It’s practical with just a few simple ingredients. Well here is one recipe 97.99% of you and more are going to love. It’s the reason why one of my most often heard of requests is for more meals that are easy to make, don’t take a whole lot of time or a laundry list of ingredients, but still have that from-scratch, seasonal-eats quality.
I’d have to say I’m just like 97.99% of the rest of the home cooks out there. This easy and flavorful healthy chicken gyro recipe starts with a simple 5-ingredient yogurt lemon marinated chicken that can be pan-fried, baked, or grilled, and is topped with a simple cucumber and dill tzatziki sauce.