A Superhero of A Gyro Recipe
You know that thing when you’re craving your favorite street food, but don’t want to put on non-PJ pants? Yeah, we get it. Homemade gyro meat is here for you! All the spiced, savory, juicy, beef-and-lamb gyro goodness that you adore, right in the comfort of your home (and favorite PJ pants.)
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What Is Gyro Meat?
Cooked traditionally on a vertical rotisserie, gyro meat is basically a heavily (deliciously) spiced cone-of-meat that’s sliced to order to fill pita bread to create one of the world's great street foods. Known as gyros in Greece, and doner kebab in Turkey, these wonderful sandwiches are globally known and loved, and we are among their many, many fans. While we love the warm, plush pita and cooling condiments, the gyro meat is the real star. It’s classically made from lamb, a combo of lamb and beef, or even chicken, is very generously seasoned with salt, herbs and spices, and is nothing sort of an impossible-not-to-love flavor explosion.
Gyro Meat Seasoning
Our goal here was to create a homemade gyro meat recipe that tasted truly classic—as flavorful and juicy as the kind you’d see spinning on a rotisserie at your favorite gyro place. So, in addition to plenty of salt, pepper and olive oil, our gyro meat is seasoned with:
- Not one, but two kinds of garlic! Fresh garlic & garlic powder.
- Oregano
- Cumin
- Thyme
- Salt and pepper
How To Make Gyro Meat
Begin by purchasing a giant, restaurant-style vertical rotisserie. Kidding, kidding. We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve for simplifying a traditional gyro meat recipe so that it’s easy to make at home. Here’s how to do it:
- Purée the onion in a food processor. Wrap it in a kitchen towel and squeeze out as much of the liquid as you possibly can.
- Combine the squeezed-out onion with the lamb, beef and all of the rest of the gyro meat seasonings.
- Time to use that food processor again! Put that seasoned meat mixture into the food processor and pulse until it looks like a coarse paste.
- Press the gyro meat mixture into a loaf pan.
- Bake! It’ll take about an hour for it to reach 165° F on an instant-read thermometer. When it does, the gyro meat is done!
Tools You’ll Need:
- Loaf pan.
- Instant-read thermometer.
- Food processor.
- Knife.
- Kitchen towel (don’t use your favorite one—it’s going to get all onion-y)
More Recipes With Ground Beef
We’ve always got ground beef on hand, because it’s so gosh darn handy. Here are a few of our ground beef go-tos:
Zero to Gyro!
Impress your friends, wow your family, or just feed yourself really, really well—whatever good thing this gyro meat recipe did for you, we’d love to hear about it! Snap a photo and share it on instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper. Happy eating!
