Slow Cooker Chicken Gyros

Woohoo, Christmas is right around the corner!! I am getting so excited and we have been decorating our home the last couple days.  Keeping in the holiday mood, I was going to bring a Christmas themed post to you today.  Then I realized that you may all be hungry and can’t eat Christmas cookies for dinner.  Or at least not every night.  So instead, today I am going to share a delicious slow cooker chicken gyro recipe I came up with.  I’ll bring on the Christmas cheer tomorrow. 🙂

My regular blog readers or my Facebook fans may have noticed a little makeover in progress.  I’ve been working with the amazing Kristen of Kio Kreations and she has designed me an amazing new logo, as well as some blog image vectors.  I am over the moon.

If you went to Kristen’s page, you may wonder why I used a florist as my graphic designer.  Kristen (and Kio Kreations) did all of my wedding flowers and they were my favorite part of my wedding.  Kristen “got me” and really understood what I was looking for then.  When I started researching graphic designers,  I remembered that she has a fine art and graphic design background.  The choice was then rather simple.

Over the next few days/weeks I’m slowly going to fix the look of my blog and hopefully it will all come together soon.  My idea was to have most of the coding and CSS fixed by the new year, just in time to start my New Year’s resolutions.  Not sure that is going to happen because I slacked a little but I have high hopes.

We’ll see what happens.  Ok, enough about my bloggyness.  On to the food.

I learned a couple of things making this.  One, when cooking chicken in a crock pot WITHOUT adding a decent amount of liquid, you should use a meat thermometer if possible.  If you don’t your chicken is going to be very dry and no amount of tzatziki sauce is going to help.  Secondly, I need to invest in cheesecloth for making said tzatziki sauce.  One step is draining the liquid out of the yogurt using cheesecloth.  I improvised with a coffee filter instead and it was VERY messy.

Slow Cooker Chicken Gyros with Homemade Tzatziki Sauce

Ingredients

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon pepper seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1 large cucumber
• 12 ounces plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (and a little extra)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried dill
• 2 cloves pressed garlic
• pita bread rounds
• sliced tomatoes

1. Place the chicken in a lightly greased slow cooker.  Layer the onions over the chicken and sprinkle with the garlic, lemon pepper, oregano and allspice.

2.  Cover and cook on low heat for 6 hours or until your chicken is cooked all the way through (measure using a meat thermometer.)

3. While chicken is cooking, begin preparing your sauce.  Chop your cucumber into as small of pieces as you can get them.  Put the cucumber into a strainer and sprinkle with a dash of salt.   Set aside, occasionally using the back of a spoon to push the cucumber into the strainer (you are trying to drain the water out of the cucumber).

4. Next, pour your greek yogurt into a bowl lined with cheesecloth.  The goal here is to remove the water from the yogurt.  Put in the fridge for one hour.

5. After the hour has passed, discard the collected water and in a medium bowl, combine the cucumber, yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, dill and pressed garlic cloves.  Mix well, cover, and refrigerate until chicken is done.

6. When chicken is done cooking, break it apart with two forks and remove the chicken and onions from the slow cooker.  Spoon onto pita halves, and garnish with sauce and tomatoes.

Nom, nom!

xoxo,

Jenny B

SaveSave