I love Greek food but I don’t get to have it often. A few weeks ago I stumbled upon an Alton Brown recipe for Gyros and decided to try it (you can find it here). Honestly, Gyros was one of those things that I never thought about making at home since the meat is usually cooked on a vertical roasting spit but this recipe calls for making a meat loaf which suits me a lot more.
To start off with: garlic, dried marjoram, rosemary, oregano, salt, pepper and grated onions. Make sure to wring your grated onions in a dishcloth or else they will give off too much liquid and the meatloaf might not hold together well.
After I had mixed the ground lamb in I put it on a baking sheet to cook. When making meat loaf I usually put a rack on top of a baking sheet, cover it with aluminum foil, spray it with Pam and then poke small holes into the foil. This allows the air to circulate better and the fat to fall down below.
While that was in the oven I started on the tzatziki sauce. You grate a cucumber and then wring it out in a dishcloth to get the liquid out. Keep in mind that the longer you leave the sauce in the fridge the better it will taste so if you can make it ahead of time do so.
Then you add Greek yogurt, salt, pepper, lots of garlic, lemon juice and mint. I also added dill afterwards.
All mixed together.
All gyros need tomatoes, cucumbers and sliced red onions as an accompaniment.
I actually have a rather hard time finding Greek pita bread at my supermarket, they tend to usually just have flat Middle Eastern style pita but this weekend I was in luck.
I put in a meat thermometer into the lamb to make sure it was cooked properly. Some of the juices puddled on top of the meat which looks a bit weird in the picture but the meatloaf was cooked through.
One big difference between this recipe and the gyros you will get in a restaurant is that the meat in these is a lot less dense so you will have to cut the meatloaf in fairly thick slices so it doesn’t fall apart.
To assemble them I cut two slices of meat, piled them along with some tomatoes, onions and cucumbers on top of a warmed pita bread (I just microwaved them for 10 seconds) and spooned on some tzatziki sauce.
These were good. I was really craving Greek food so I was really happy with these. The flavour of the meat is pretty much spot on what you will get in a restaurant. The texture is of course different but it is still tasty which is what counts. I piled on more tzaziki sauce after I took this picture since it is pretty much my favourite part of eating gyros. With the garlic and the raw onions this is not first date food but happily I am married so I get to eat smelly food whenever I please. This was surprisingly fast to make, the prep was maybe 15 minutes in total and it is a very easy recipe to make for a crowd since it doubles easily.
