6 Easy Chicken Recipes for Your Big Fat Greek Dinner

Serve one of these lemony, garlicky, herb-packed chicken dishes dishes for dinner tonight.

Published May 30, 2024

Skewers served with salad, pita, and tzatziki sauce — Serious Eats / Julia Estrada

The typical Greek flavorings for chicken are so well matched to the ingredient that they feel almost elemental, fixed in our culinary firmament by taste memories accumulated over the course of hundreds of cookouts. Lemon, garlic, oregano, red wine vinegar—these are ingredients many of us now associate with juicy, perfectly charred chicken.

Perhaps I'm guilty of universalizing my culinary upbringing. In any case, all of us at Serious Eats are big fans of the pairing of poultry with Greek ingredients. Here are several Greek and Greek-inspired recipes that capitalize on these flavors, with occasional help from other Greek staples like spinach, tart, creamy feta, and fresh dill.

Creamy Garlic Chicken Spanakopita Skillet
Serious Eats / Morgan Eisenberg
The classic Greek spinach-and-phyllo pie is morphed into a one-pan meal with the addition of butter-fried chicken and a garlicky béchamel. Think spanakopita, but make it a pot pie.
Creamy Garlic Chicken Spanakopita Skillet
Greek-Style Rice Pilaf With Chicken Thighs
Serious Eats / Yasmin Fahr
This one-pan meal starts with cooking chicken thighs until well browned. Onion and garlic are cooked in the rendered fat, and rice is briefly toasted. Finally, artichoke hearts and stock are added, and the thighs are rested on top. A 15-minute simmer and dinner is ready. A last-minute addition of crumbled feta and lemon make the dish pop.
Greek-Style Rice Pilaf With Chicken Thighs
Avgolemono Soup (Greek Lemon-Egg Chicken Soup)
Serious Eats / Morgan Hunt Glaze, Food Stylist: Margaret Monroe Dickey, Prop Stylist: Claire Spollen
This tangy and creamy chicken soup is a Greek classic for a reason. Chicken breast is slowly poached to perfection in homemade broth, followed by the addition of rice or orzo. Finally, the soup is thickened with a combination of beaten eggs and lemon juice. The poached chicken is returned to the pot, and the soup is garnished with dill.
Avgolemono Soup (Greek Lemon-Egg Chicken Soup)
Chicken Souvlaki With Tzatziki Sauce and Greek Salad
Serious Eats / Julia Estrada
For her souvlaki recipe, Yvonne Ruperti whips up a vinaigrette made with lemon, red wine vinegar, and fresh oregano that does double duty as both chicken marinade and salad dressing. Sandwiched in flatbread, the combination of Greek salad, creamy tzatziki, and charred chunks of grilled chicken is hard to beat.
Chicken Souvlaki With Tzatziki Sauce and Greek Salad
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Greek-Style Grilled Chicken With Oregano, Garlic, Lemon, and Olive Oil
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Butterflying a whole bird and slathering it with a mixture of salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and lemon zest is the key to getting grilled Greek-style chicken that is flavorful, crisp-skinned, and perfectly cooked. Once carved into pieces, the chicken is drizzled with more of the garlicky vinaigrette. Also check out Kenji's quicker Cornish hen version of this grilled chicken recipe, which includes tzatziki, grilled zucchini, and a salad.
Greek-Style Grilled Chicken With Oregano, Garlic, Lemon, and Olive Oil
Roasted Garlic and Feta Chicken Sausages
Serious Eats / Joshua Bousel
Here, Joshua Bousel captures all the salient flavors of Greek poultry cookery in sausage form: lemon, red wine vinegar, garlic, and oregano are combined with ground chicken and some tangy feta cheese for good measure. The garlic is roasted first, which mellows its bite and helps it meld into the rest of the sausage filling.
Roasted Garlic and Feta Chicken Sausage