Wonder if you could Taco Bell up your own Gyro by having a flat-bread tortilla base (using the Gorditas preset), with steak, tomatoes, onions and their spicy ranch sauce.
On a different note, I had a hankering for shawarma this past weekend. During quarantine the only shawarmas I’ve gotten have been delivery, and they’re soggy and sad by the time I get them. So I tried this recipe that approximates chicken shawarma, and lemme tell you, it’s freakin delicious. No vertical spit, so it’s not exactly the same, but it definitely satisfied the hankering.
Very similar, although obviously Turkish cuisine doesn’t include pork. They both derive from the same source - the Ottoman Empire - although I doubt you’d get many Greeks to admit that.
I must admit I haven’t notice many kebab (gyro) places in Greece, but they are everywhere in Turkey. I think here in the UK, they tend to be Turkish-run, and we know the food as ‘doner kebabs’. The Greeks seem to run our fish and chip shops.
I think they’re all recognizable as the same thing, but there’s definitely a spectrum and I think you pointed out the biggest difference. IMO the meat carved from the spit is significantly better, the flavor’s not in a completely different universe but the texture is way better.
There’s a place nearby that serves the pre-formed slices and their tzatziki is very, very mildly flavored. I will still order it now and then in a pinch because, hey, it’s gyros and it’s convenient but I’ve had much, much better from other places.
They’re also really good on a warmed up flour tortilla (over a gas flame, I prefer, if you have a gas stove) with the toppings you choose. Eat them like a taco or a wrap. There are a few places in Budapest where they serve doner/gyros on essentially a large tortilla wrapped up, and topped with onions, tomato, red cabbage, lettuce, white sauce and a red (hot) sauce if you’d like. Delicious. Veal or chicken as the meat.
Some pix of what I’m talking about here.
I’ve grown to enjoy this type of flat bread (I don’t know if it’s yufka or lavash or something different, but I swear to me it was the same as a flour tortilla) with my gyros/doner meat more than a pita, which can be a bit too bready for my tastes. That said, I love something like a Berlin-style doner for the bread, so it all depends. (Damn, what I would give for a Berlin doner.) But the tortilla method is pretty easy, fairly healthy and light, and I always have tortillas lying about. I usually grill schwarma-spiced chicken on Monday to serve with rice and salad (I spice mine with cumin, coriander, cardamom, garlic, lemon, S&P), and on Tuesday lunch (like today), I use the leftovers with the tortilla and toppings.
That looks pretty great–and the pita was definitely the most disappointing part of the meal. I’ve baked pita a few times, and it’s fun, but a fair amount of effort in a home oven. Tortillas would work great.
I was thinking about using cardamom, but decided to follow the recipe exactly the first time. Cardamom would add a lovely note to it, I bet.
The recipe I discovered a couple weeks ago uses 1 tablespoon each of coriander, cumin, and cardamom. It’s this recipe, but I found it on a different website. I thought no way in hell that could be right. A whole tablespoon of cardamom? Well, I had a bunch of cardamom seeds I had ground up awhile ago that needed to be used, so I tried it. To my surprise, it wasn’t overwhelmed by the cardamom. Had I not seen the reviews and overall rating, I would have thought this was an error and not tried it. I’ve never tried being that aggressive with the cardamom before.
There’s a million and a half of these recipes. That’s my current favorite, but I bounce around. Sometimes I just use the “schawarma spice” from the Middle Eastern grocer – smells like a bunch of allspice, cumin, coriander, some clove, bit of cinnamon, etc. Sometimes I look to South Asian spicing like murgh malai or tikka kebabs. It’s fun experimenting.
Yea, those do look identical to burrito tortillas. I’ve gotten into the thinner, wider, floppy tortillas from Sanabel that seem to be easily available around here. Like you said, I toss them on the gas burner to paradoxically soften & crisp up. I’ve come to associate them with early/mid summer and fill them with fresh veggies, feta, roast red pepper, fresh herbs and protein of choice. They’re not so bready but still have that pita flavor/aroma. It’s almost that time of year!
I guess lahmacun?
Yeah, the ones I always got on the street of Budapest were not charred like that and totally pliable. But it looks like it may have been the same idea.
Here’s another photo from the same place:
Wanted to point out that I believe Gyros (and some other things) are common in the Middle East as well as Greece. I think Baklava is slightly different depending on who is making it. I don’t know if gyros are different, but I think they are.
When I lived in Pittsburgh there was a Syrian deli next to my Apartment building that had the Tahziti (sp?) cucumber sauce on their Gryros and really awesome Baklava. The “gyro” crap they sell at Arby’s and a pizza shop near me do not IMO taste anywhere near as good. And they usually use sour cream instead of the cucumber sauce. To me, that’s how you can tell if it’s worth it, if they have that delicious creamy ranch-like sauce, or if they top it with sour solidified milk.
Yeah, I think that’s been mentioned in this thread. In Turkey (and among the Turkish diaspora), it’s döner kebap, in the Middle East, you have schawarma. In Mexico, you have al pastor (from the Syrian immigrants, I believe, tailored to Mexican ingredients and tastes.) The meat-on-a-spit is around all sorts of places. The differences are the spicing, the meat used, the type of sauces that go with it, the bread component. Tzatziki, I believe, is only in Greece. In Turkey and the Middle East, you may find a sauce based on tahini; or it may be a yogurt-based sauce with garlic. It may have mint or dill. Some have a bit of sweetness in the form of sugar (but I think that’s seen more in North America, especially something like the Halifax donair.) Berlin döners have a choice of hot sauce, herb sauce, and garlic sauce. They may be on a pita. They may be rolled in flat bread like laffa. When I make my own, I make a sauce with yogurt, tahini, garlic, and lemon and usually throw an herb in there like cilantro and/or parsley. Then I also serve it with a simple tomato and hot pepper sauce for heat (no garlic, as it’s in the white sauce I make.)
There’s myriad variations. If you want the more ranch-like one, add a bit of mayonnaise and some sugar to the white sauce above (that reminds me of the “halal-style chicken” street cart sauce you get in New York.) It’s fun!
I’m a fan of gyros (YEE-rods) sandwiches, once in a while, Tonight, just for experiments sake, I tried making a gyros meatloaf at home. The texture is slightly different than the sliced and marinated meat which is the same everywhere (just like won ton soup). But it’s surprisingly close, and very good. On bread I think it would taste very similar with onions, feta and homemade sauce.
The recipe (modified) used well blended ground beef and lamb, kneaded for a long time, garlic, garlic powder, onions, onion powder, dried onion, oregano, rosemary, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. I added some other things to make it moister and more nutritious. I was genuinely surprised with how close it tastes to the real deal, and will be using the food.com recipe again.
Israeli shawarma is very similar to regular Middle-Eastern shawarma, except that it’s usually chicken rather than lamb, and it doesn’t have any dairy-based sauces. A standard order, from a place like Hakosem in Tel Aviv, would be chicken from a spit with hummus, tahini, amba (mango sauce), garlic sauce, hot pepper sauce, diced cucumbers, diced tomatoes, diced onion and fried eggplant slices, either in a pita pocket, wrapped tightly in a laffa, or in a bowl.
That’s a lot of sauces for one wrap. How does it not just turn into an amorphous pinkish goo?
Different sauces are applied at different stages, which means they’re layered between the various solid components. Also, who cares what it looks like? (For the record, the hot sauce is brown, the amba is bright yellow, the garlic sauce is dark green and the tahini is, of course, beige; if you mixed them together, I don’t think the end result would be pink).
I can see brown hot sauce and yellow amba, but dark green garlic sauce? The stuff I’m used to getting with shawarma around here (which primarily comes from Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi immigrants) has always been white and aioli-ish in consistency. I’m assuming the kind you refer to must have some kind of fresh herbs mixed into it.
Appearance is a big part of what makes food appetizing. I for one can tell you I get turned off when I’m eating a hamburger that has both ketchup and mayo on it and they combine and turn pink, which is why I usually ask for no mayo.
Ketchup, mayonnaise, (and/or a bit of mustard, Tabasco, brandy, etc. depending on the exact recipe) make for a basic pink “cocktail sauce”, which some customers do in fact ask for on their gyros. (Also known occasionally as “Sauce américaine”, though the real American Sauce is more of a seafood sauce containing onions, tomatoes, white wine, brandy, salt, cayenne pepper, butter and fish stock.)
Meanwhile, in America, “cocktail sauce” is a mixture of ketchup and horseradish, possibly with a bit of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, and is generally only served with shrimp and oysters. When ketchup and mayo are mixed on purpose around here, it’s called “fry sauce” and is generally served as a dip for fries, as the name implies.
I am not familiar with any such sauce being served in America. It sounds vaguely like cioppino broth.
In reality, it is a French sauce that was invented by a chef who had worked in the United States. He just called it “American sauce”; no idea if he claimed it was based on something he picked up in a specific city but that’s a good question. Basically tomato melted with oil and butter and seasoned with chopped onion and shallot, garlic, parsley, chervil and tarragon (+ spices, brandy etc)