How To Do A Good Gyros At Home

Gyros is a typical street dish in Greece. We tell you how to prepare it at home and some more things.

What is gyros

The gyros consists of meat roasted vertically and served with pita bread, sandwich bread and different types of sauces. The most common is tzatsiki   and vegetables. It differs from the Turkish doner kebab in that the gyros can have pork meat.
On the other hand, Arabic shawarme and Mexican tacos al pastor are very similar dishes.

According to Greek historians, the soldiers of Alexander the Great prepared this delicious sandwich. In the 19th century, a similar sandwich was made in Baghdad under the name Judhaba.

Since 2010, historians affirm that the gyros originated in the 50s in Livadiá (Central Greece) and in New York in the early 70s.

How to make the gyros at home

As at home we do not have the device with the vertical skewer, a good way to do it is to cut the meat into pieces and skewer it with olive oil, a little garlic and salt.

You can make it from lamb, beef  or both. For the more “light” diners you can even make them with turkey or chicken breast.
Make the meat little by little so that it does not dry out and if you choose a meat with little fat, brush it with some oil from time to time. If you want your dish to be healthy, opt for olive oil.

Moisten the pita breads and pass them through a pan, a griddle or in the oven to make them richer and tastier.

The tomato, lettuce, and onion should be at room temperature, while the sauce should be cold. Opt for white onion and red onion. In addition to the flavor, it gives it a very nice color.

You can sprinkle on the meat when it’s done some crumbled feta cheese. You can also add a little paprika or sweet paprika, sprinkled over the sandwich to give it more color and flavor.

If you want the meat to have a lot of flavor, it is best to marinate it. The marinade can be made with bacon, minced red onion, minced garlic, and a little pepper, sweet paprika, cumin, nutmeg, oregano and a dash of lemon.
Put the meat with all the ingredients in a bowl and leave it in the fridge for about 12 hours. In this way you will add flavor to the dish.

How to prepare the sauce

To make the Tzatsiki sauce, mix the Greek yogurt with plenty of grated cucumber, olive oil, crushed garlic, lemon juice, and chopped mint or parsley.

In northern Greece, Tzatsiki sauce is substituted for mustard or tomato sauce. You can also substitute it for aioli, mayonnaise or ketchup. That already depends on your taste, although we recommend that you keep the original recipe.

Typical Greek dinner with gyros as the main dish

In a good Greek meal, there are certain things that cannot be missing: the typical Greek salad, kalamata olives, typical Greek drinks and baklava for dessert.

Greek salad

To prepare the Greek salad, the necessary ingredients are:

• Tomato
• Purple Onion
• Cucumber

• Green pepper
• Kalamata olives
• Feta cheese
• Olive oil, salt and vinegar

To drink, you cannot miss: Ouzo, Retsina, Raki and coffee .

baklava

Although baklava is eaten by Greeks as a snack and not as a dessert, you can use it in your Greek dinner.

Ingredients

• Filo pastry
• Butter
• Walnuts
• Pistachios
• Sugar, cinnamon, honey
• Lemon and orange peel

Preparation

1. Crush the nuts, add the sugar and a teaspoon of cinnamon
2. Put the filo dough in a buttered dish
3. Add a little mixture and another sheet of filo dough, layering and always painting each layer with butter
4. Finish the cake with 2 layers of filo dough
5. It is cut into diamonds and baked at 180ºC.
6. When you take  it out, add a syrup on top,  made from honey, water and a cinnamon stick

You already have it! If you follow these simple steps, you can enjoy a healthy and 100% Greek recipe.