It's my street food superstar supreme sandwich, shawarma, Lebanese style!

Announcer: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Theme music playing] Succulent, spicy, saucy, and shaved off a spit, shawarma is one of Lebanon's and the Middle East's most signature supreme street food star supreme sandwiches throughout the international and the American street food scene.

Translating to ".turn"/ or to ".rotate,"/ shawarma is thinly sliced, luscious Lamb meat that is mixed with caramelized onions and stewed tomatoes, then smothered in my tangy tahini sauce and traditional tasty toppings, all wrapped up in warm pita bread, making this special street food star sandwich something that you'll want to create, make, and taste time and time again right at home, and no rotisserie needed.

It's succulent.

It's spicy.

It's saucy.

It's shawarma!

My supreme street food star sandwich.

Lebanon and the Middle East are known for some of the most famous street food stars in the world, and now, thankfully, in America, too.

And today we are making one of the most delicious sandwiches of all time, and it's simply called shawarma.

There's many ways to say it, and there's many ways to spell it, but I have the most delicious way to make it right at home.

And the word "shawarma" literally just translates to "turn" or "to rotate," which, if you frequent a lot of different Lebanese or Middle Eastern, or Mediterranean eateries or restaurants out there, you've probably come across a beautiful, big piece of meat that's sort of rotating in rotisserie, spinning round and round and round and round.

But today I'm gonna show you how to make it right at home, and there's no spit needed.

So I have begun taking a sharp, small paring knife, just like so, and I'm making slits into this beautiful boneless leg of lamb meat that I have right before me.

You can also use beef.

You can blend the two meats, the lamb and the beef, but I'm gonna go traditional today with our lamb, our luscious lamb meat.

And now I'm going to grab some garlic cloves that I have right over here.

They're absolutely beautiful.

And we're just gonna sort of slide those into the slits that we've made, and this is going to add a lot of flavor, a lot of garlic flavor, right inside the lamb meat.

Our lamb meat looks beautiful.

We have our garlic cloves just sort of slid right into those slits.

And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna get them into our marinating bowl just like this.

Look how beautiful this looks, right?

You guys are just gonna love this recipe.

I can't wait for you guys to make it at home.

I'm gonna give my hands a quick rinse here.

Make sure that I wash them thoroughly.

OK, very nice.

All right, and now we're gonna get to our marinade.

And we're gonna use about a half a cup of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

If you have white wine vinegar, then you can also use that as well.

And the juice of one lemon.

This is gonna give a lot of nice, sort of tangy flavor to the lamb meat.

OK, that looks beautiful.

And now for our spices, which really make shawarma shawarma.

Heh heh!

We're gonna grab our sea salt and our freshly ground pepper.

Gonna make sure to generously season this.

So it's about one tablespoon of sea salt, and one tablespoon of freshly ground pepper.

Beautiful.

It's looking good already.

And now for our spices.

We're using one of my favorite spices, which is our allspice.

It's gonna give a nice warmth to our lamb.

Beautiful.

And we're also gonna go for some cinnamon.

That was about one tablespoon of allspice, by the way.

We're gonna use about half a tablespoon of cinnamon.

Sort of all these beautiful earthy colors.

Heh heh!

Reminds me of the sort of landscape, the terrain in Lebanon itself.

We have some nutmeg as well, about a half a tablespoon.

And also some clove-- nice and woodsy.

Another half a tablespoon of this.

All of these spices you can actually find pretty much in your local grocery store or supermarket, too.

There's a couple, like our sumac spice, which you can find at Middle Eastern or Mediterranean specialty food stores.

And the sumac really makes the shawarma shawarma, I feel.

It had a really nice lemony sort of tart, tangy flavor, and that's really kind of the flavors and the notes that you'll find in a really true, authentic shawarma sandwich.

And look at that beautiful crimson sort of color, too.

A little bit more sumac.

Heh heh!

Just because I love it so much.

And also we're gonna use a little bit of our cardamom, which come of come in these whole pods.

You can also find it finely ground, too.

But I'm just gonna take a couple and kind of just pound them out a little bit with the back of my knife just to release the flavor.

Gives a nice richness.

Add those in as well.

And we're gonna use our tongs.

We're gonna sort of just lift the lamb meat up and sort of flip it around a little bit in the bowl.

Make sure to kind of really work the lamb into the liquids and the spices.

So now I'm just gonna cover it with a nice big sheet of plastic wrap that we have right over here.

You want to let it marinate, overnight preferably, in the refrigerator, or at least 6 to 12 hours if you can.

OK, so we're gonna get this in the refrigerator right over here.

Heh heh!

And luckily I have one that we have been marinating overnight.

Just want to show you guys how beautiful this looks.

The lovely reveal.

Look at that.

It really has become nice and tender, with all of those spices, and all of the oils, and red wine vinegar, and lemon.

And we are gonna get it onto our roasting rack, But first I'm gonna sort of create a nice sort of onion bed for this lamb meat to kind of lie upon.

So we're gonna grab a big nice Spanish yellow onion.

We're also gonna grab a red onion as well.

And one shallot.

Sort of my three favorite onions.

Heh heh!

So we're gonna get our aromatics into the bottom of our roasting pan that I have right over here.

We're gonna remove the rack like I just did.

And now we're gonna split apart all of our red onions, and our yellow onions, and our shallots so they cover the entire bottom of the roasting pan.

OK, beautiful.

Get all of our onions in.

And then I also have some hot water in my teapot that's been kind of boiling away.

We're going to add about a couple cups.

Now we're gonna get our roasting rack right back on top.

We're gonna grab our lamb meat that's been marinated.

Lift it right out of that bowl.

Beautiful big piece of meat.

Just like that.

So now we're gonna get this into the oven.

I have it preheated at 425 degrees.

It's gonna slowly roast for about an hour and 30 minutes.

It's basically 20 to 25 minutes per pound.

And because we have 5 pounds of meat in our beautiful boneless leg of lamb meat that we have here, that works out to be about an hour and 30 minutes.

[Music playing] You can't have a shawarma sandwich without some tasty toppings, and today we're making some of my favorites of all time for our shaved meat sandwich.

It's gonna be so succulent.

I have beautiful red bell peppers right before me, and we're gonna roast them up.

Just gonna drizzle a little bit of olive oil right on those skins.

Just like that.

and some sea salt, too.

Just like that.

Gonna roll them around a little bit so all the sides are evenly coated with the olive oil and the sea salt.

Beautiful.

OK, so we're gonna get these in the oven.

So we're gonna let those red bell peppers fire roast under the broiler for about 10 to 12 minutes.

And we're gonna periodically turn them through, you know, over on all sides so that they char evenly.

And now we're gonna get to some onions.

I have some beautiful vidalia onions that we're gonna caramelize.

And I have some tasty tomatoes on the vine there, too.

Now it's time for our tasty tomatoes.

And I'm using--it's a shocker, I know--my tomatoes on the vine.

Heh heh heh!

I do use other tomatoes, too.

But I do love the tomatoes on the vine.

They're just so juicy and just so delicious.

OK, that does it for our tomatoes.

Now we're gonna get these cooking, so I'm just gonna start with a little bit of olive oil in both of our saute pans that we have right over here.

Make sure to coat our vegetables really well.

We're gonna scoop up all of our vidalia onions.

Get those in our big saute pan.

Now we're just gonna scoop up all of our delicious tomato on the vine slices, get those into our smaller saute pan just like that.

Oop, one fell out.

Heh heh!

It's gotta get back in there, and the juices as well.

Juices are really gonna make this topping delicious.

And now we're just gonna get our heat onto low.

We want them to just to nicely sort of slowly cook down.

I smell that our roasted red peppers are just about done, so we're gonna get our bowl ready to meet and greet them, and we're gonna grab them from the oven.

It smells so amazing in this kitchen.

Between our roasted red peppers and our lamb meat, whoo!

Smokey.

Fire roasted.

Heh heh!

Gonna turn off our heat.

Look at these beauties.

They're nice and charred, I would say, right?

OK, we're just gonna get them into our bowl.

Just beautiful, beautiful char that we got on those bell red peppers.

Just cool off a little bit.

And now what we want to do for our roasted red peppers is we just want to grab a sheet of plastic wrap.

We're gonna cover these.

We're gonna tightly cover them just like this.

And you can see that we're sort of locking in that steam, which is going to help to sort of soften the skin even more, and also help to release the char from the flesh of the roasted red peppers.

So we're just gonna set these aside on our counter top, and now we're gonna get back to our onions and our tomatoes.

And we need to season these up a little bit with a little bit of sea salt.

Beautiful.

They smell so good.

[Sighs] Such a flavorful kitchen today.

The lamb meat roasting.

We have our roasted red peppers.

Now we've got our stewed tomatoes and our caramelized onions.

I'm gonna grab a little bit of sumac spice, too, because I want to sort of enhance that sumac spice flavor from the lamb meat.

And I'm just going to sprinkle a little bit of these onto our onions, a little bit of the sumac spice.

Sort of nice and lemony, tart and tangy.

Just delicious.

Beautiful.

Now we're just going to sort of toss these around a little bit.

Sort of multi-tasking today in the kitchen, right?

Heh heh heh!

Got so many things cooking away.

But it's nice because then everything hopefully will be done around the same time.

They smell out of this world.

Absolutely out of this world in this kitchen today.

And now, by this time, our roasted red peppers have really steamed away and softened away as well.

We're just going to place these on our board just like so.

Get them lined up.

Heh heh heh!

Lovely.

All right, so now what we want to do-- you can actually just sort of pull out the stem just like that, out of each one of these.

And what I'm gonna do first, I'm just gonna slice them down the center.

You can see they're still sort of steamy, but I have cook's hands.

So if you want to leave them for a little bit longer, until they're a little bit more manageable for you, you can definitely do that, too.

And now, using a sharp, small paring knife, we're just gonna kind of lay it flat on our board and peel off the charred skin with your fingers and with the paring knife.

You can see how easily it lifts up for you.

OK, beautiful, just like that.

And you can kind of use the kind of back of that sharp paring knife just to scrape it away.

OK, beautiful.

And then also, just flip it over.

And again, using kind of the edge of the paring knife, you can just sort of scrape away any seeds.

All right, now we're just going to simply slice the roasted red pepper into thin slices.

Kind of mimicking and mirroring, I should say, the onions and the tomatoes, Just like that.

Beautiful.

Our roasted red peppers look absolutely perfect.

They're perfect peppers, and now I'm gonna get them into our onions.

I just want to shift our onions over a little bit.

They're gonna go in the same pan, on one side of the pan, actually.

Yummy!

Looking good in this Julie Taboulie kitchen today.

Heh heh!

OK, so actually a this point, the onions and the tomatoes are both done, so I'm just gonna turn off our heat.

And our toppings need a sauce, right?

We're gonna be making our tasty tahini sauce that's just gonna smother the toppings in our shaved meat sandwich that I just can't wait for, and I can't wait to share it with you guys.

And speaking of our shaved meat, I can smell our roasted lamb meat sort of slowly roasting away, and it smells absolutely delicious.

And I want to make sure that we baste it with all those delicious juices on the bottom of the pan.

[Music playing] We are going to be making our tasty tahini sauce.

It's our signature sesame seed sauce that is a very traditional sauce in Lebanese and Middle Eastern cooking.

And it's gonna be an absolutely delicious sauce that's gonna smother our shaved meat sandwich.

So I have three cloves of garlic, And we're gonna just simply place these in our food processor.

And I'm also stepping up our signature sesame seed sauce, our tahini sauce, with the addition of some fresh flat-leaf parsley that I have right over here.

It--[inhales]--smells so fresh.

Heh heh heh!

And also some fresh na'na, our fresh spearmint leaves, too.

And we're gonna give this a nice whirl.

We want to sort of finely mince.

OK, beautiful.

Now we are going to add our tahini.

And let's talk about tahini, shall we?

It's a sesame seed paste, and as you can see, it just has this beautiful sort of like light caramel color to it.

And you can kind of just shake it a little bit if it's a small jar like this.

It's a good idea also to stir it with a spoon, too.

Again, you just want to sort of incorporate the oil that naturally settles to the top of the jar with the paste.

And I just want you guys to see, this is really what you're going for when you're looking for a tahini paste.

You want it to be nice and smooth and fluid.

Just like that, OK?

Nice and creamy.

We're gonna pour about one cup of our tahini paste.

Just gonna eyeball it just like that.

Beautiful.

And we're also gonna add ice cold water.

This is just gonna help sort of to get this whole sauce going.

It's gonna help to break down the paste a little bit before we add all of our fresh lemon juice.

Gonna get our lid back on, and we're gonna give this a whirl.

OK, beautiful.

Let's check on it.

OK, you can see that it's nice and sort of like fluid, and nice and creamy, which is exactly what we're going for.

And now we want to add some fresh lemon juice.

Just like that.

And we also want to season it with some sea salt.

And now we're just gonna sort of let it whirl and come into this nice, smooth, creamy sauce.

OK, let's check on it.

Ooh!

Looks perfect.

It looks delicious.

You can see that nice sort of creamy consistency, and it has the subtle hints of garlic sort of running in the background, and then those fresh flavors of the parsley and the mint.

I just want to give it a quick taste to make sure that we're on point with our sauce.

The sauce is key for me whenever I'm making the tahini sauce, whether it's for the falafel, or our shawarma sandwich, or anything really that we're calling for the tahini sauce.

Mmm.

Our tasty tahini sauce tastes out of this world.

I love how lemony it is with a little bit of garlic in the background, and all of those fresh herbs from the fresh flat-leaf parsley, and our fresh spearmint, our na'na, as well.

And I can smell that our lamb meat is about done, and I'm gonna take it out of the oven.

I'm gonna let it rest a little bit before we shave it up, and then I'm gonna plate all of our tasty toppings so we can finally make our shawarma sandwiches, our street food star sandwiches today.

[Music playing] Take a look at our roasted-to-perfection leg of lamb!

Look at this.

Is that not luscious, or what?

So I've had it resting for about 10 to 15 minutes or so when I removed it from the oven, just so all of those delicious, luscious lamb juices can stay right in that beautiful piece of meat that we have.

And now we're gonna carve this up because we want to make our shawarma sandwich.

Finally!

Heh heh!

So I'm just gonna start to sort of--oh, my gosh.

It's cooked perfectly.

It's just so tender, I don't really have to work that hard in finely slicing it.

Oh, my gosh.

It smells out of this world, you guys.

You're gonna love making this street food star at home.

No spit needed, right?

I want to actually just ladle some of those delicious juices that are sitting at the bottom of the roasting pan.

And I just want to sort of smother this meat with this delicious natural au jus lamb juices.

Keep it nice and moist, right?

Look at that.

I know you guys are gonna make this recipe at home because it is that good.

OK, now we're gonna make our shawarma sandwich, finally!

We're gonna take a nice, small loaf of our khebez, our pita pocket bread.

Just gonna take the shaved meat.

And if you don't want that much bread, you can actually just sort of open up the pita bread into two halves.

OK, now we're gonna get our tasty toppings.

I have our roasted red peppers.

They're gonna go right on top of our luscious lamb meat.

Just like that.

And our caramelized onions, our vidalia onions that we sprinkled a little bit of that sumac spice on.

Beautiful.

Loving this shawarma sandwich.

And some of our stewed tomatoes.

And now for our tasty tahini sauce.

We just want to sort of smother the sandwich with the sauce.

It's always good when you're making our street food stars, you're making tahini sauce for any of our dishes, to make sure that you make a lot because people do love tahini sauce.

And I want to add a little bit of freshness.

I'm gonna take a little bit of parsley and some mint.

Can you believe that we're making this at home, too?

Who would've thought?

OK, now we're gonna roll this up.

I'm actually gonna twist it towards me, and I'm just gonna roll it around.

Just like that.

Take a look at this sandwich-- our shawarma, our shaved meat sandwich, our street food star.

Gonna take a nice bite.

Mmm.

Wow.

It's absolutely incredible.

I know that you guys are gonna love making our shawarma, our street food star sandwich, right at home.

And no rotisserie needed.

So, until we cook again, I wish you and yours to always takloull bil' hanna-- eat in happiness.

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"Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Music playing]