Speedy Chicken Fatteh

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The Speedy Chicken Fatteh! A quick dinner centred around crunchy pita chips, piled high rice, rotisserie chicken & finish with a creamy, dreamy yogurt sauce. This flavourful speedy chicken is perfect for easy weeknight dinners & they're great for meal prep.

Chicken fatteh in a decorative bowl topped with pomegrantes, almonds, and parsley

If you're anything like me, you've got a major crush on Levantine flavours & dishes. My love for Levant food is a long-term affair, and it's pretty safe to say that it's going anywhere any time soon.

This speedy fatteh recipe is a nod to the authentic Fatteh Dajjaj (that's Arabic for chicken fatteh) with a few twists of my own to make it speedy without sacrificing flavour. It's sped up with...

Rotisserie Chicken. Rather than spending an hour cooking a whole chicken, a rotisserie chicken. Cause let's be honest, we can't call this a speedy chicken fettah without a few tricks. Plus, rotisserie chicken is affordable and can easily be used for multiple meals in a fraction of time, but of course, if you have leftover roasted whole chicken like my Middle Eastern roasted chicken sitting in the back of your fridge, use that instead. 😉
Cooked Rice. Yes, I'm recommending precooked rice or leftover rice. I know, I get it. So many of us are trying to balance out our crazy town, and pre-cooked rice is a great option! Sometimes I use plain packaged precooked rice; other times, I make extra Instant Pot Lebanese Vermicelli Rice or Mediterranean Yellow Rice.

Making Fatteh together makes for the best date night at home, OR if you’ve got little ones running around, they’ll have so much fun helping you layer the bowls. Say hello to your next delicious weeknight Mediterranean kitchen project! ♡

What is Fatteh?

Before we hop into the nitty-gritty of the recipe, let’s chat about fettah for a sec. Fettah's, a very traditional Levantine dish, is essentially a delicious, savoury bowl of leftover bread. The word fettah in Arabic means crumbs!

In authentic Fettah recipes, a hearty filling made of vegetables, chickpea, rice, and meat is piled on layers & layers of crispy, crunchy bread. Then drizzle with garlicky yogurt and fried nuts. The fried pita bread gets deliciously crispy & golden brown, creating the perfect light & crisp crunch for the filling & yogurt sauce.

There are NO rules to what filling you choose with your Fatteh! Each region, city and family have their favourite Fettah topping. The only thing that is constant in fettah is the yogurt sauce and the pita chips.

It’s pretty darn delicious. I absolutely love them; I think you will too!

Speed Chicken Fatteh Ingredients:

Wanting this Fettah recipe to be especially hearty, textural, and dinner-worthy. I use all of the traditional ingredients with a few precooked additions to create a speedy version of the perfectly meaty, satisfying textured bowl of Mediterranean delight!

The Classics: Traditional Fatteh ingredients include…

Pita chips→ baked or fried it up to you! I love the taste quickness of fried pita chips. However, baked pita chips are just as tasty and possibly a healthier option. But don't let these chips fool you; they're still chips, after all.
Yogurt sauce→ Yogurt, tahini, garlic, lemon, and salt⏤are blended together to achieve the delicious authentic fatteh taste. You can also add some mint and parsley to the sauce too, but I prefer to use that as a garnish.

The Filling:

Rotisserie Chicken→ I use ½ a breast per person when layering the feta. However, there are no rules to how much or how little you add to your bowl.
Pre-Cooked Rice→ To keep things speed, I prefer to use leftover or pre-cooked rice. If you want to make fresh rice, you can use my Mediterranean yellow rice recipe, but the recipe will take a little longer to cook.

The Add-Ons: This is where things start to get really special. A few well-considered additions take this Fatteh to the bourgie level.

Fried nuts→ With most authentic Levantine cooking, nuts fried in ghee is a MUST, then it followed with the nuts and ghee being poured on top of the yogurt sauce. I don't always follow this tradition, but I don't always saute the nuts in a bit of oil. Dry roasting your nut can often leave you with nuts cooked on the outside but raw inside. The best nuts for fatteh are almonds, pine nuts and cashews.
Fresh herbs→ If your basic like me, just stick to parsley; however, you can go all out and try different herbs for garnish, like mint, cilantro, oregano, or maybe even dill or basil.
Pomegranate seeds→If they're in season, do yourself a flavour favour! And sprinkle some of these gems on top. There's nothing like the little bursts of the juicy, tart pomegranate seeds along with the crunchy pita chips...I'm getting hungry just remember this!

Decorated bowl filled with chicken, rice, pita chips, and topped with yogurt, pomegranate seeds and almonds

How to Assemble a Fettah?

Pita Layer: Place your pita chips into a bowl. I usually use 1 piece of pita bread per person.
Rice Layer: Scoop ½ cup of cooked rice onto the pita chips (if you're really hungry, you can add more)
Chicken Layer: Slice or shred the chicken. It's up to you! I use about a cup or ½ of a chicken breast per person.
Yogurt Layer: This layer is my favourite layer. The garlicky creaminess just hits the spot. I start with 2 tablespoons of sauce and serve extra as aside.
Garnish Layer: Choose your favourite nuts, and if you have pomegranate seeds, throw them on too!
Herb Layer: Sprinkle your favourite finely diced herbs and dig in!

MAKE-AHEAD OPTION #1 (about 20 minutes of active work): Prepare the rice & store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. The filling will keep for about 3 days. Then bake your pita chips, simply preheat the oven, cut the bread into triangles, toss with olive oil & bake. Chips will keep for 7 days.
MAKE-AHEAD OPTION #2 (about 10-20 minutes of active work): Use precooked plain rice & prepare pita chips and yogurt sauce. Store yogurt sauce in the fridge for up to 3-4 days & the pita chips in an airtight container for up to 7 days. When you’d like to eat your fettah, simply heat the rice and chicken – easy!

I can't have dairy can I use dairy free yogurt?

I have yet to find a good dairy-free yogurt product that would work with fatteh. However, cashew cream is a great substitute. There's a recipe for cashew yogurt sauce in the notes.

Can I use gluten free bread

You sure can. Try to find a gluten-free flatbread or use corn tortillas. The taste will be a bit different, but it's the crunchy texture we're after.

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Yield: Servings 4

Chicken Fettah

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 rotisserie chicken breast, sliced or shredded
2 cups cooked rice, warmed
2-3 pita bread, separated and cut into squares
2 tablespoon of olive oil

Yogurt sauce

1 cup yogurt
1 lemon, juiced
⅓ cup water
2 tablespoon tahini
1 teaspoon garlic powder or 1 clove of garlic
½ teaspoon salt

Topping suggestions

Sliced almonds
Pomergante seeds
Parsely, finley chopped

Instructions

Prepare the yogurt sauce. Add the yogurt, tahini, salt, garlic powder, and lemon juice to a medium-sized mixing bowl. Mix the ingredients together. Slowly add a bit of water to the sauce to achieve a pourable sauce.
Yogurt Sauce Tip. You'll notice the sauce is really thick, which is not what you want for this recipe. You may use all of the water suggested in the ingredients, or you may use less depending on the thickness and type of yogurt you're using.
Prepare the pita chips. Heat a large frying pan with 2 tablespoons of oil and cook until the pita is crispy—5 minutes cooking time. Remove the bread from the pan onto a plate to cool. Some parts of the chip may still be soft, but they'll harden as they cool.
Heat the rice and chicken. If your chicken and rice are cold, then you'll need to reheat them while the pita chips are cooling. You can use a microwave for the stovetop to reheat the filling. How you choose to heat your rice and chicken is 100% up to you.
Assemble the Fettah. Fill each bowl with 1 cup of pita chips, ½ cup rice, 1 cup of chicken, 2 tablespoon yogurt sauce and top with the nuts, pomegranates, and parsley. Serve immediately

Notes

Dairy-free Yogurt Sauce

2 cups raw cashews, soaked 2 hours, drained
1 cup water
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon tahini
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt

Add all of the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the sauce into a serving dish and adjust seasoning as needed.
If the sauce is too thick, add 1 tablespoon of water at a time until you've achieved a pourable consistency.

Baked pita chip

If you want to skip the pan-frying, you can bake your pita chip instead. Place pita bread and olive oil into a bowl massage the oil over the pita bread. Place the bread on a baking sheet and bake at 400ºF for 15-20 minutes.

What is Fatteh?

Speed Chicken Fatteh Ingredients:

How to Assemble a Fettah?