Gyros (pronounced yeros) is a style of cooking on a Spit Roaster that originated in the Mediterranean in the 19th century. It recently gained popularity among spit roasting enthusiasts across Australia.
What is Gyros?
For those unfamiliar with cooking gyros on a spit roaster, the best way to describe it is the thinly sliced shaved meat used to make souvlakis at fish and chip shops also known as Kebabs or Sharoma. While chicken or Pork are traditionally used to make gyros, any thinly sliced meat can be used and by far the most popular in Australia is Lamb. It is Palm-sized fillets squashed together between 2 Gyros Disks and cooked on a spit roaster. As the outside cooks, it is shaved off and served.
These days, we’re finding that more customers are cooking gyros on their spits to cater for their parties. The reason for this is due to how easy it is to prepare and cook for a lot of people at once. It also allows you to shave bits of meat from the outside while continuing to cook the inside. Unlike when cooking a whole chicken or roast and removing the meat from the skewer.
Gyros is designed to be shaved throughout the cooking process while still on the skewer. It means you will always have hot food for those all day long summer get-togethers. This also works especially well for 18th and 21st birthday parties, where the kids arrive at various times. Gyros allow you to keep shaving more meat from the outside, ensuring that you always have freshly carved hot meat to serve.
Here’s a short video of chicken and lamb chicken gyros cooking on the Flaming Coals Mini Spit Roaster. It will surely send your tastebuds into overdrive.
Equipment needed to cook Gyros:
- If you’re planning on cooking your own gyros at home, here is what you’ll need:
- BBQ or Spit
- Charcoal (mallee root charcoal is the best)
- Spit skewer
- Spit motor
- Gyros discs
What is a gyros disc?
Many people are unfamiliar with gyros discs. So hopefully, the video below explains what they are and the advantages of using discs over prongs. Interestingly, it essentially allows the meat to be carved more easily against the flat surface of the disc, rather than trying to avoid the spikes on the prong.
What meat to buy:
• Lamb shoulder
• Chicken thigh
Greek Gyros Recipe: If you’re new to making gyros and aren’t sure how to marinate the meat, you could ask the butcher to do it for you. Otherwise, if you’re picky like me and prefer to do things yourself, here’s a lamb gyros recipe that I frequently use.
Tip: Alternate lamb and chicken pieces to keep the meat from drying out. The fat from the lamb will keep the chicken from drying out. If you want a large amount of gyros to be served at the same time, you can do this by carving the outside and keeping it warm in a thermopot, or by wrapping the meat in foil so it acts like an oven, cooking it through to the middle, then remove the foil and crisp up the outside.
Did you know? Gyros is a Greek word that means “to turn” and was derived from the Turkish word Doner. Which has the same meaning. The Greeks used to call this style of cooking “Doner” rather than Gyros, but they changed it to “Gyros “after being chastised for using a Turkish word! It seems that not even the humble BBQ spit can escape politics!
