Air Fryer Chicken Shawarma

This easy air fryer version of Chicken Shawarma has all the expected flavors (cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, and cloves) but it’s super-quick and easy to make so you can have shawarma at home any night.

Video: Air Frying Chicken Shawarma

What Is Shawarma?

Traditionally, shawarma is made with thin slices of meat stacked on a skewer that is cooked on a vertical rotisserie. You may have seen them spinning in your favorite Middle Eastern restaurant or in a food truck. The original meat of choice for this was lamb (and if you’re craving lamb, I urge you to go try these Air Fryer Lamb Kofta!). These days, you’ll also find different varieties of shawarma, including beef and, like our shawarma recipe today, chicken.

The meat gets wonderful flavor from a seasoning blend that includes spices such as cumin, turmeric, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. It’s fragrant and savory with a touch of heat. Often the meat is served in a pita wrap like a gyro with veggies and a yogurt-garlic sauce (or a tasty tzatziki sauce like this).

What Kind Of Chicken?

Air fryer boneless skinless chicken thighs are my favorite! Using them for this recipe was therefore an obvious choice. The reason I like them so much is that thigh meat is flavorful and stays juicier with the high heat, versus chicken breasts which can dry out. The thighs are therefore going to end up more similar to the juicy meat you’d get from that shawarma rotisserie. Choose boneless and skinless thighs, because you’ll want to shred or chop up the chicken after cooking, so dealing with bones is inconvenient.

If you’d like to use boneless skinless chicken breasts, you absolutely can. Chicken breasts in the air fryer take a bit less time than thighs though, so you’ll cook them for 15-18 minutes.

Prepping The Chicken

Start by combining all your spices and some oil in a bowl. Next you’ll add your chicken thighs, but you want to give them as much surface area as possible to get those spices on them. So, when you open your package of chicken thighs, have a look at them. If they’re in little bundles, unroll them into larger flat pieces (what’s happened here is that the butcher removed the bone and then wrapped the meat back up around where the bone was). Once you’ve unrolled the chicken thighs, put them into the bowl of oil and spices and turn and stir them to coat them evenly all over.

Arrange the chicken in a single layer in your air fryer basket. They can be a bit squished together, but you don’t really want them overlapping or on top of each other.

Time And Temperature for Air Fryer Shawarma

Cook the seasoned and oiled boneless skinless chicken thighs in the air fryer at 400°F for 18-20 minutes without opening the air fryer and without flipping the chicken. The reason is that you want to let it be good and hot in there and also, you want to let the exposed top side of the chicken pieces darken well.

After 18 minutes, open the air fryer and check on the chicken. If it’s well-browned on the tops, no longer pink inside when you slice into it, and has reached an internal temperature of 165°F as read on an instant read thermometer, it’s ready. If not, you can put it back in for another couple of minutes.

Once cooked, transfer the chicken to a cutting board and slice it or shred with forks. You can see my Shredded Chicken Tacos recipe for tips on shredding your chicken easily.

If you’d prefer to cook chicken shawarma in the oven or Instant Pot, you can find instructions in my Shawarma Chicken Thighs recipe over here. 

Serving Chicken Shawarma

The classic way to enjoy this is as a chicken shawarma wrap with pita bread, though you could use a tortilla or another flatbread. It’s delicious paired with vegetables like cucumber, red onion, tomatoes, and a tzatziki or hummus. But you can also add in lettuce, bell peppers, and feta cheese.

I also love to use this delicious shawarma chicken in a rice bowl or on a salad with my Honey Tahini Dressing, or lots of, you guessed it, tzatziki!

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