My in-laws regularly follow a long-standing Greek tradition of roasting lamb gyros over a charcoal spit roaster. I recall them trimming and preparing tens of kilograms of lamb shoulder every Friday night when they managed a Greek restaurant. If you don’t want to trim the lamb shoulder yourself, ask your butcher to cut it into steaks that are no thicker than 2 cm.
Perhaps I’m being a bit picky, but nobody seems to do it correctly, so I just get the deboned lamb shoulder and trim it myself. I’ve been showing how to prepare a lamb shoulder for gyros during our in-store BBQ courses, but I figured I’d better video the procedure so you can watch it in the comfort of your own home—or at the very least, show it to your butcher.
I’ll show you how to prepare a deboned lamb shoulder for making gyros in this video.
The best meat for gyros, in my opinion, is a lamb shoulder, but you must trim it properly to avoid getting too much fat in your souvlaki.
First, trim the meat of any extra fat.
Next, slice the meat into more even pieces that are about 1 centimetre thick (definitely no more than 2cm). Our preferred boning knife is this one, which is also the one shown in the video below.
Cut the deboned lamb shoulder into a diameter no larger than the gyros disc you’ll be using, even though you’ll never get it perfect. Make sure the “steaks” are smaller than the 150mm round Flaming Coals gyros discs we use because larger ones will be harder to carve.
Once your lamb is 1-2cm thick and cut into pieces smaller than your gyros disc, cover the lamb with your favourite Greek Gyros Seasoning or marinade. Based on my in-laws tried and tested gyros recipe, we have bottled it up and now sell authentic Greek Gyros seasoning for everyone to use at home.
by: Rhiannon Peterson