This Chimichurri Chicken Sandwich is something I found recently, and I have been dying to give it a try. I love chimichurri, but I never made it at home until I started this blog. Now I can’t believe I ever bought it because homemade chimichurri is quick, easy, and tastes so much better than store-bought! I have posted a few recipes with chimichurri on steak, chicken, and even Chimichurri Potato Salad, but never on a sandwich. And I’m kicking myself for not thinking of that! Chimichurri on a sandwich sounds like the perfect condiment. Let’s find out if it’s as good as I imagine it is!
My favourite chicken sandwich. It’s loaded with crispy chicken thighs, a delicious chimichurri sauce, red peppers, avocados and rocket. You’ll love it!
The Ingredients
The list of ingredients for this recipe isn’t very long, but my pre-shopping check of my kitchen told me I only had 2 ingredients: red wine vinegar and caster sugar. That wasn’t a surprise since this sandwich is loaded with fresh ingredients.
I’m not sure if you can find them in the bread aisle, but I didn’t even look for ciabatta bread there. I went straight to the bakery and found freshly baked and pre-sliced ciabatta.
I have learned the hard way to read the list of ingredients and the instructions as I’m doing my kitchen check. That’s because recipes occasionally don’t list all the ingredients—sometimes they are only mentioned in the instructions.
Tip: This recipe also needs salt, pepper, and olive oil. They’re pretty standard items, but I thought I would mention that just in case.
The Process
The recipe begins with making the chimichurri, but I decided to switch things up. First, I deboned and seasoned the chicken thighs. I looked, but I couldn’t find skin-on boneless chicken thighs. Once you try it a few times, deboning chicken thighs is quick and easy to do. I like to buy bone-in meat to save money since the more processed meat is, the more expensive it is. Deboning 4 chicken thighs only took me 3 minutes, but I have had a lot of practice.
I loved that the instructions included a tip on how to get crispy chicken skins by placing them into a cold pan. I used my 10' cast-iron skillet, and it had just enough room for 4 chicken thighs. The first side (the skin side) took 9 minutes including time for the pan to warm up and cook the chicken.
Once the chicken was frying I moved on to the chimichurri. That was just a bit of chopping and stirring, though my chili pepper corer did come in handy. And remember the olive oil I mentioned in the last section? This is when I needed it. I used plain old olive oil, not extra virgin, by the way.
The chicken and chimichurri finished one after the other. The timing was perfect! the chicken had a couple of minutes to cool while I sliced the avocado and toasted the bread. Then it was time to pile everything onto the ciabatta, snap a few photos, and give this one a try. Spoiler: It was incredible!!
One thing to note, though, is I only used 1 chicken thigh per sandwich. The ciabatta bread I bought wasn’t big enough for any more than that. But I made sure to pile on as many toppings as possible to make up for it!
Timing
This recipe lists a total time of 30 minutes, and it isn’t broken down into prep and cooking time. I made up for that and broke down each major step. Here’s how it went:
- 4 minutes to debone and prep the chicken
- 14 minutes to cook the chicken
- 13 minutes to make the chimichurri
- 5 minutes to toast the bread and slice the avocado
- 2 minutes to assemble 2 sandwiches
- 38 minutes total
I went a little over that, but not by much. Deboning the chicken wasn’t a step in the recipe, so I’m not including that in my time rating below. That takes the total time down to 35 minutes and bumps it up half a star.
