A simple Greek Meal you can make at home

Greek-style chicken, village salad, and tzatziki with rice. This simple Greek meal is all you've ever wanted and more. Join me as I walk you through how to make it and share a few tricks from my time working in a Greek restaurant. Without further ado, let's get to it.

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Greek-Style Chicken

It's best if this Greek-style chicken is left to marinate overnight (two hours will be okay), so we will start with that. The marinade for the chicken is essentially a less acidic version of Greek salad dressing. If you want to, you can use Greek dressing, but it is a pretty simple marinade to make so why skip it?

Marinating the chicken

To make the chicken's marinade, combine one tablespoon of minced garlic with one tablespoon of dried oregano, the juice of one lemon, and a quarter cup of olive oil. Mix well. Cut three large chicken breasts into 2cm x 2cm cubes and add to the marinade. Stir to coat the chicken. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for the night.

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Roasting the chicken

To cook the chicken, first heat your oven to 400°f. Spread a few tablespoons of olive oil on a sheet pan, drain the excess marinade off the chicken, and spread the chicken out on the sheet pan. Season with salt and pepper, then roast for 25 to 35 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. The chicken is cooked when its internal temperature reaches 165°f.

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Tzatziki

Tzatziki is like the secret weapon of Greek food. It can act as a dip for vegetables or bread, as a sauce for grilled or roasted meat, or as a spread for pita wraps. Oh, and it tastes fantastic. There are two things that you have to focus on to get the right consistency for your tzatziki. First of all, the yogurt. It has to be a thick Greek-syle yogurt. Otherwise, you may end up with watery tzatziki. No one wants watery tzatziki. The second point to focus on is how you process the cucumber. Let's take a look at how you do that.

Salting the cucumber

Cucumbers are mostly water. As the cucumber sits in the yogurt, a lot of that water is going to be pulled out, again, giving you watery tzatziki. There are four steps to process the cucumber to limit how much cucumber juice leaks into the yogurt. 1. remove the seeds. 2. grate the cucumber. 3. salt the cucumber. 4. drain the cucumber.

To remove the seeds, cut the cucumber in half lengthwise and scoop them out with a spoon. This will remove a lot of excess moisture, but it will also extend your tzatziki's shelf life because the seeds will spoil quicker than the rest of the cucumber. Grate the cucumber on the large setting of a cheese grater. This creates more surface area, allowing you to extract more moisture. It also helps to distribute the cucumber throughout the tzatziki evenly. Mix half a teaspoon of kosher salt into the cucumber. The salt will pull water out of the cucumber. Finally, put the cucumber in a strainer set above a mixing bowl. Let it sit for ten minutes, then discard the liquid.

Finishing the tzatziki

To finish the tzatziki, add one tablespoon chopped mint, a quarter teaspoon dried dill, one teaspoon minced garlic, the juice of half a lemon, and one cup of Greek yogurt to the cucumber. Mix well. You can use the tzatziki right away, but if you cover it and put it in the fridge for an hour or two, it will have more flavour.

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Greek Salad

You can't have a Greek meal without a Greek salad. When you think of Greek salad, you may think of cucumber, green pepper, red onion, cherry tomatoes, olives, all on a bed of romaine lettuce topped with feta and Greek dressing. That's a delicious salad, and one you will see in every Greek restaurant in North America, but it isn't what we're making today. Our salad is a more rustic version of the Greek salad. Gone are the tomatoes, olives, lettuce and red onion.

Making the Greek Salad

To make the Greek salad, thinly slice half an English cucumber, whole green bell pepper with the seeds and stem removed, one tablespoon of fresh mint and about a half cup of feta. Put all of that in a bowl with one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of olive oil, one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of minced garlic, and the juice of half a lemon. Mix the salad and serve right away, or put in the fridge for an hour to develop the flavour.

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Plating the Greek Meal

I served my Greek meal with basmati rice, which I've cooked on the blog a thousand times, so I didn't see the need to share the process. Put the rice on the plate, the salad beside it, then the chicken, tzatziki and a lemon wedge. The meal tastes as fresh as it looks.

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The Wrap Up

Greek food is one of my top 5 global cuisines. I love it, and I am so happy to share this meal with you. What is your favourite Greek food? Tell me in the comments below or on Facebook. Remember to share this post on Facebook or Pinterest if you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!