"Gyro meat" aka souvlaki

[Dave in AZ]

I’ve been making gyros for last few weeks. I made an Eastern European sausage called Cevapcici (“cha vap chi chi”), that is very similar to gyro meat, and are usually served 5 on a pita. That lead me to reading 20 recipes for gyro meat and trying a bunch.

This is my favorite so far, and tastes accurate to the shaved cones of meat you often see. It is pork, beef, and lamb.

Turns out that in Greece, almost 100% of gyro meat is pure pork, usually pork shoulder slices, just stacked on a rod with salt, pepper, oregano, paprika, and vinegar. The vinegar is to lower pH of the slow cooked meat and make the big 20 lb cones safer for long cooks. In non-pork places, the meat tends to be a ground mix of beef and lamb. In much of US and Germany, it is a blend of pork, beef, and lamb, and this is my favorite. You can go to gyro-supply websites where cones of premade meat are sold, and read content and spices.

Here are some pics and other helpful threads I wrote, for pita breads, Cevapcici, etc.
Gyros

Homemade pita breads, writeup here:
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/6206/bread-pita-breads

Tzatziki sauce:
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/6351/tzatziki-yogurt-cucumber-sauce

Here is my writeup on making Cevapcici sausages, which are similar and can be used instead. They have salt, black pepper, paprika, but no oregano or rosemary.
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/6210/cevapcici

Recipe for 1kg, scale as desired

1. 1 kg meat, ground 4.5 mm, of which:
   – 40% pork shoulder approx 25% fat
   – 40% beef, 80/20 ground fine or chuck
   – 20% lamb.
   – these amounts are flexible, but need 15% lamb at least to get the right lamb flavor. If you like the lamb version. They sell 1 lb ground lamb at Safeway and Kroger, but it is with frozen foods usually, not meat counter. Otherwise, recall Greek gyros are 100% pork, so that works too.

2. Spices.
   1.7% salt. 17g
   0.2% black pepper. 2g
   0.3% paprika 3g
   0.1% rosemary. 1g, ground fine
   0.1% oregano 1g, ground
   0.2% ground red pepper. 2g, or cayenne
   0.5% garlic granulated 5g
   0.4% onion powder 4g
   0.1% msg. 1g

3. 5 to 10% water, 50 to 100g or ml

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Process
Mix spices with water, add to meat. Mix to good protein extraction, 5 min by machine.

Pack into quart ziplock bags, 1 lb or 500g each. Smoosh flat, freeze.

To use, microwave a bit to thaw, slice into pinky sized grid with knife ( basically scoring big meat patty). Brown both sides in hot pan with olive oil, separate sausage along cuts or score lines.

Eat on pita or plain with Tzatziki yogurt sauce, with sayteed onions. Other common additions are feta cheese, sauteed red pepper, sauteed zucchini.

Here are some using fluffy fajita size tortillas instead of pita bread:

[gus4416]

Dave in AZ I could eat a dozen of them I love gyros so if you have come up with the recipe for the meat that is on a gyro cone in shops please please share it so I can copy it thanks Dave

[Dave in AZ]

gus4416 ok, I got the spices all correct now. These are the basic flavors, you could certainly vary them as desired. But to get the gyro flavor, I felt it needed this much rosemary, oregano, black pepper. I tried less, and ended up adding more to pan when frying to get correct flavor.

Hope you try and like, super quick to make and cook, since it is caseless.

[gus4416]

Dave in AZ ok Dave guess I better go buy some lamb

[WVTim]

Dave in AZ that looks great

[calldoctoday]

Dave in AZ Everything looks fantastic!

[mrobisr]

We love gyros, though we now leave out the veal and use straight lamb since the flavor really stands up to the spices. A true gyro has a cucumber Greek yogurt sauce that really adds to the flavor experience.

[Dave in AZ]

mrobisr indeed! That is the tzatziki sauce that I list, and the white stuff you can see there smeared on the pita, and in the container I make it from homemade strained greek yogurt.

Here, I made a new thread with my recipe and pics for tzatzike sauce for you, to make this thing more complete
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/6351/tzatziki-yogurt-cucumber-sauce

[mrobisr]

Dave in AZ Sounds and looks terrific.

[AdamusLignus]

Duuuuuude! I’m so excited to find this. We LOVE gyros but have been basically reliant on whenever Sam’s Club gets in the frozen pre-made meat since our grocery stores stopped carrying any for some aggravating reason. It’s now been months since our Sam’s has had anything.

I gotta give this a go. Thank you!

[Dave in AZ]

AdamusLignus I’m sure you’ll do it proud, your pictures of your cooks always look great

[AdamusLignus]

Dave in AZ Thanks, man, I try! Now I just have to find some “cheap” lamb to grind or maybe score some pre-ground stuff.

[Dave in AZ]

AdamusLignus Cheapest lamb I have found is the 1 lb ground lamb packs that Safeway and Kroger/Frys have. Those are usually NOT in meat section, but in frozen specialty foods. Usually $7 for 1 lb. And once in a while they have lamb that doesnt sell and mark it down, and I grab and freeze. Wierd… when I was a kid, my mom cooked lamb all the time because it was cheap!