Greek-style chicken cakes

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What is this sandwich?

These chicken cakes turned out pretty good when I first made them as the main course for our dinner one night, but I felt like they would benefit from a couple of changes. I also felt we could turn it into a sandwich, so here we are—turning chicken cakes into a Greek-focused sandwich.

This sandwich is focused on a chopped chicken and feta cheese chicken cake that’s crisped up and sauteed with panko bread crumbs. The Greek salad-seasoned chicken patty is placed on top of homemade tzatziki sauce and lettuce, and then topped with crispy chicken skin and a small salad created with diced tomato, red onion, feta, and a red wine, oregano vinaigrette.

If you read all of that carefully, you might be thinking that the sandwich is missing olives, which often appear in a Greek salad, but I have that covered, too, because I also created a homemade kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato sandwich bun that I used to pull the whole sandwich together into one cohesive experience.

What is a Greek salad (Horiatiki)

Greek salad isn’t called “Greek salad” in Greece; it’s called horiatiki. When served in Greece, they typically do not include lettuce, but if you find one on a menu outside of Greece, it’ll likely be served on a bed of lettuce or some sort of green leaf vegetable. The main components of Greek salad are: tomato, cucumbers, onion, olives, and feta that have been tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, and Greek oregano.

Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato sandwich buns

The base of this bun recipe is my simple soft hamburger bun recipe, which is a fairly easy 6-ingredient recipe that works great every time. I made two batches of this recipe since I already knew the bread itself was a solid recipe, but I wanted to tweak how many olives and sun-dried tomatoes to add to a six-bun batch. I also made one batch of buns in a variable number (10) to test to make sure I got the weights and volume tightened up so that this recipe could be added to my bun calculator.

During the testing for these buns, I found that 2 olives chopped up into pretty small pieces per bun was the right amount. And then I think an equal amount of sun-dried tomatoes matches up well with the olives. This turns the buns into pretty flavorful pieces of bread where you can taste olive or tomato in every bite.

Other than the addition of olives and sun-dried tomatoes, this bun recipe is like most other bun recipes, which means it’s a pretty easy bake. If you’ve never baked before, I’d probably steer you toward a plain bun recipe, but you could jump forward and try this one, too, if you think you’re ready.

Here’s my Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato sandwich bun recipe. But don’t worry, you can use your favorite hamburger bun recipe if you want to make this sandwich without baking the buns.

Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato buns

Recipe Card

2 hours and 50 minutes

Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato buns

Add a pop of Mediterranean flavor to your next batch of sandwich buns. Olives and sun-dried tomatoes will contribute color, aroma, and a lot of character to your next burger or chicken sandwich.

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Try: Kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato buns in our Bun Calculator

Greek-style chicken and feta cakes

I took the crabless crabcake inspiration from Allrecipes and added a bit of feta cheese and spices that are found in Greek food. This recipe requires a bunch of pre-cooked chicken, which you can easily acquire by buying a rotisserie chicken at your local grocery store.

You could cook your own chicken if you wanted. You simply need 2.5 cups of pulled and chopped chicken, but I like to use rotisserie chicken because it’s easy, fairly inexpensive, and you should save the skin to cook into crispy chicken skin (which I also use in this sandwich—check the next component below).

Once you have all your ingredients in a bowl, you can form four or six patties. I prefer four and think that the slightly larger patties are a bit more tender, but if you want thinner, crispier patties, you should shape six. Just try to make the patties similarly sized to fit the buns you plan to use.

The uncooked chicken cakes can be stashed in the fridge for 3 or 4 days or as long as you’d feel comfortable keeping cooked chicken in there. Once you’re ready to cook, you can add 2 tablespoons of panko per chicken cake that you plan to cook to a plate or bowl and use that with some salt and pepper to coat the exterior of each cake. Then it’s just a simple matter of cooking in a pan with a little olive oil for about 4 minutes per side or until the exterior of each chicken cake is nicely golden brown and crispy.

If you like crab cakes, you’ll enjoy these chicken cakes, and you should be able to cook them more often because they will be a lot cheaper than buying crab. The texture is a little “heavier” than crab cakes because chicken is denser than crab meat, but the concept is really similar and pretty easy to put together and cook. These work great as a main course, or obviously, you can stick them in a sandwich, just like I am doing in this sandwich blog post.

Crispy chicken skin

Whenever I break down a rotisserie chicken, I try to save the skin. You can saute the skin in a skillet, or you can roast it in the oven to create crispy pieces of seasoned skin that basically function like bacon in a sandwich. Just try to remove it in large pieces and bake it, and you’ll have a tasty, textural component that you could also chop up and use as a salad topping, or even go crazy with it and add it on top of a pile of mashed potatoes. Don’t discard the skin.

To make crispy chicken skin, place the skin in one layer on a sheetpan and cook in a 400°F (205°C) oven for 20 minutes or so.

The chicken cakes are soft, texturally, in this sandwich, and I think the crispy skin goes a long way to adding something extra to each bite.

Tzatziki

Most sandwiches need some sort of sauce, and for this one, I felt it needed to be tzatziki. If you’ve never had tzatziki, it’s a creamy sauce that’s made with a base of yogurt and cucumber. The cucumber is grated so it isn’t too chunky for the sauce, and then other ingredients like lemon juice, garlic, and several herbs are added, which complement the creaminess and bring extra flavor to this sandwich.

My wife created this tzatziki recipe way back when I first wrote about falafel pitas. It’s a solid tzatziki recipe that brings a nice bit of tanginess and a lot of creaminess to whatever you serve it with.

Much like a crabcake would be served with tartar sauce, it sort of seems required to serve Greek-style chicken cakes with tzatziki.

Tzatziki yogurt sauce

Recipe Card

20 minutes

Tzatziki yogurt sauce

A cucumber-focused, slightly tangy, and creamy sauce that's a perfect accompaniment to falafel or your next Greek-style gyro or sandwich.

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Tomato, red onion, feta salad

With a tender on the inside, crispy on the outside chicken cake, and a creamy sauce like tzatziki, this sandwich is missing something tangy and fresh. For that component, I felt it would make a lot of sense to create a simple tomato and red onion salad. Those two vegetables are very commonly seen in gyros and Greek salads, so it felt right to lean toward them since they’re not included in the other components of the sandwich.

I diced them up into similar-sized pieces, added crumbled feta, and tossed them in a simple olive oil, red wine vinegar, and oregano dressing. You could also skip the red wine vinegar and use lemon juice instead to get closer to a traditional Greek salad, but I already had red wine vinegar in the pantry, so I used that.

Now that we have described and talked about all the components of this sandwich, you should look at some photos of it assembled properly.

Greek-style chicken cake photos and full recipe

Here are some photos of some of the Greek-style chicken cake sandwiches that I created during the testing process for this recipe. I made several different versions and ate them in sandwiches and as the main course for a meal, and I think they work a lot better in sandwich form.

Scroll through the photos and get the full recipe for this sandwich just below.

Greek-style chicken cake sandwiches

Recipe

Greek-style chicken cake sandwiches

These tender chicken cakes are full of feta cheese, oregano, and spices that pair well with tzatziki, and a simple tomato, red onion, and feta salad to create a fantastically fun sandwich experience.

chicken feta greek

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by Jonathan Surratt

Ingredients:

Greek-style chicken cakes

• 2.5 cups chopped cooked chicken meat (most of a full rotisserie chicken - save the skin!)
• ¹⁄₂ cup crushed crackers (around 15 Townhouse or Ritz brand)
• ¹⁄₄ cup minced onion
• ¹⁄₂ cup mayonnaise
• ¹⁄₄ cup feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon oregano
• ¹⁄₄ teaspoon salt
• ¹⁄₄ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 to 6 dashes of hot sauce
• ¹⁄₄ cup vegetable oil (for frying)
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs (with a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper each)

Tomato, red onion and feta salad

• 1 small tomato, diced
• ¹⁄₄ red onion, diced
• ¹⁄₄ cup feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (can use lemon juice)
• ¹⁄₄ teaspoon dried oregano
• large pinch of salt and black pepper

Sandwich assembly

• 4 sandwich buns (link to my kalamata olive and sun-dried tomato buns)
• 4 to 8 tablespoons tzatziki sauce (link to recipe)
• lettuce (optional)
• Greek-style chicken cakes (from above)
• crispy chicken skin (optional - from above)
• tomato, red onion and feta salad (from above)

Direct Link to Recipe

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Directions:

Greek-style chicken cakes: combine all of the Greek-style chicken cake ingredients in a large bowl EXCEPT for the vegetable oil and panko bread crumbs (they are both used during the cooking process). Mix everything up very well and then divide into 4 or 6 equal portions.

Form each portion into round patties that are at least 3/4 inch thick and about the diameter of the buns you plan to use. Place each patty on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan or plate covered with plastic wrap until it is time to cook. The patties are easier to handle when they are cold, so if you can rest them for 4 hours or more, they will be firmer to the touch. The patties can be rested in the fridge like this for up to 3 or 4 days. 

Crispy chicken skin: if you used a rotisserie chicken, make sure to remove as much skin as possible. Place the skin in a flat layer on a sheet pan and bake at 400°F (205°C) for 20 to 25 minutes or until the skin has firmed up and is crispy like bacon. Store in the fridge for up to a week.

Cooking Greek-style chicken cakes: when it is time to make sandwiches, remove the chicken cakes from the fridge and add 1 cup of panko bread crumbs, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper to a large plate or bowl. If you're not cooking all of the chicken cakes at one time, you only need about 2 tablespoons of panko crumbs and large pinches of salt/pepper per chicken cake. 

Coat each chicken cake in the panko mixture on both sides. 

Add vegetable oil to a medium to large skillet over medium heat. Once the oil starts shimmering, add chicken cakes and cook for around 4 minutes per side. Everything inside the cakes is fully cooked, so we simply need to make sure the middle is warm and the exterior panko bread crumbs have browned and turned crispy. This should take about 3 to 4 minutes per side. 

Remove the chicken cakes from the pan and place them on a paper-towel-lined plate if you want to remove some of the exterior oil from frying.

Tomato, red onion, and feta salad: in a small bowl, combine all of the salad ingredients and toss. Taste to see if it needs more salt or pepper and add those as needed. Place aside until it's time to make the sandwich. 

Sandwich assembly: toast your buns and then add tzatziki sauce to the bottom of each bun.

Top the sauce with lettuce and then a Greek-style chicken cake. Add a crispy chicken skin on top of the cake and then top with some of the tomato, red onion salad. 

Add more tzatziki to the top bun if desired and close the sandwich. Serve and enjoy.

Check back next week

Next week, we’re starting a short series of sandwiches I’ve never eaten from restaurants that have removed them from their menus. I think it’ll be three different sandwiches, and maybe it’ll be fun, or maybe it’ll be terrible. Find out with me.