Thursday, April 26, 2007

Chicken Gyros 2 for one Crockpot Thurs.

It's Thursday again! That means it's time for all the crockpot yummies! Hosted over at Diary of a SAHM. Today I will share with you how I took Susanne's 40 Clove Garlic Chicken and put a Greek twist on it. I've been craving Greek gyros like the ones we got in Germany. SO when i saw the recipe I immediately thought just a little tweaking and I've got gyros! That's when my mouth started watering.
you will need
Salt, Pepper, thyme, rosemary and basil. (I've taken pix of my herbs i got a a local farmer's market)
Of course you'll need the 40 cloves of garlic, unpeeled. (i bought a few extra b/c I love garlic.)
also the celery and the chicken (a small one that will fit in your crockpot)
You also need tomatoes, lettuce,
more garlic like one clove,
2 cucumbers
onion large sized
1 small onion
1 Tbs sugar or splenda.
1 16 oz container of fat free sour cream.
Some pitas ( i made some home made but you can use store bought.) The recipe will be below!
Ok I really don't measure stuff so I'm guessing at the measurements. take your chicken out of the package and rinse it off inside and out with cool water. pat dry
Salt and pepper the outsides and in. Take 1-3 Tbs of each of the herbs and generously coat the outside and inside of the chicken. Now you're going to saute your chicken. Why? you ask? B/c this will kill the germs on the chicken and provide a nice safe environment for cooking in the crockpot (if you look closely at my pix you can see this chicken is in the pan) While that bird is getting it's bunns toasted, cut your celery and lay it on the bottom of your crockpot. This is so the chicken doesn't sit on the bottom of the pot and leaves room for juices to flow. Slice up the large onion put some on the bottom of the pot on top of the celery and stuff some inside the chicken. save about 1/4 a cup for later. Stick about 5-8 cloves of garlic inside the chicken also. Set the chicken on the celery and put the rest of the cloves of garlic all around it and put the lid on the crockpot. Set it on low and walk away for 8 hours.. You'll be drooling long before it's ready to eat it smells wonderful!
Meanwhile.. to make the Sakai (sp?) white stuff.
take the FF sour cream ( why ff? b/c it has no taste. in Germany they have this stuff called quark (sp?) that is basically a base for things like this)
press a clove of garlic into it. Take the onion you put aside and chop it up small and put it in the mixture. take one cucumber and seed it. (I leave the skin's on so it looks neat) chop it up small and add to the mixture. Mix it all up and put it in the fridge till dinner.
slice the tomato, small onion and other cucumber for your gyros later.

Pita bread makes 8
This recipe I adapted from Farmgirl's recipe please go there for in depth info on how to make these wonderful pita's. I'm just giving you the skeleton of the ones I made following her recipe. I use my lovely Kitchen aid mixer with the dough hook..

1-1/2 cups bread flour (keep the bag out for sprinkling the kneading area)
1 cup of whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 Tablespoons good olive oil
1 cup warm water (105-110 degrees)

8 squares of aluminum foil for baking

Take the Flours and mix it together with the yeast, and sugar. Make sure they're mixed together well. Add the water and the oil mix until it starts pulling together then add the salt. You may need to add just a tad more of the flour so the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. I let my kitchen aid to the work of kneading it for 6 min then I take it out and knead just a little more. Divide it into 8 and roll into balls. cover with a damp towel and let them rise for 30 min (or more if you get distracted like me) Pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees Flatten the balls into discs and roll out to the 3/16ths of an inch. (just get out the ruler and figure that out) place each disc on a foil and bake for 5-8 min or until they're puffed up and slightly brown. Take them out of the oven stack them and cover with foil so they puffy part drops. you can cut them in half and fill the insides or use them whole folded in half.. it's up to you.

The chicken should be done take it out of the pot and "shred" it. if yours is like mine it will fall off the bones coming out of the crock pot. so there really isn't a need you just want small chunks/pieces of chicken. Take the white stuff put a dollop on the pita add some tomato, onion cucumber and lettuce. Enjoy!

7 comments:

Sandra said...

I LOVE Farmgirl, she has the most amazing recipes....and I LOVE pitas so I'm definitely trying that recipe too.

I can not wait to try yours....thank you for sharing :)

jessica said...

WOW that looks yummy! I'm droolin over here... I going to buy a chicken tonight, about how many lbs? I'll have my crock pot days on friday so I can use your recipies from thursdays:) hehe. your such an awesome cook/baker! you rock! ttyl!

Megan said...

YUMMO!! I'm totally drooling here! :)

Pamela Foreman said...

Yum yum!! There's a place here that has gyros, but they are no where near as good as the ones in Germany are! Next time I make my menu for the week and need to go to the store, I'm going to gather all these ingredients and try it out! Tks!

Kelli said...

Wow!! My husband would love all that garlic!! Thank you for sharing the recipe!
Kelli

NewLifestyle said...

Excellent, another garlic recipe to add to alllllll of my others for me and Dear Hubby.....I loves me garlic :)
Have a great weekend your way and thanks for sharing a yummy garlic recipe.

Anonymous said...

I love gyros, but have never tried a chicken gyro. It looks really good.