Photo: Elgaard · CC BY-SA 4.0
Gyros
A Greek wrap of marinated pork or chicken grilled until crisp-edged, piled into a soft pita with tzatziki, tomato, onion, and even fries. At home, thinly sliced meat seared in a pan makes it quick and easy.
Ingredients
- Pork (shoulder) · or chicken thigh, thinly sliced500 g
- Pita bread4
- Tomato · sliced1
- Red onion · sliced0.5
- French fries · optional1 cup
- Marinade
- Olive oil3 tbsp
- Lemon juice2 tbsp
- Minced garlic3 cloves
- Oregano1 tbsp
- Paprika1 tsp
- Salt & pepper · to taste
- Tzatziki
- Greek yogurt1 cup
- Cucumber · grated and squeezed0.5
- Garlic, lemon, dill · to taste
Steps
- ⏲ 30 min
Slice the meat thin and toss in the marinade; chill 30 minutes, and no longer than 2 hours.
- ⏲ 3 min
Tzatziki: mix the Greek yogurt with the squeezed cucumber, garlic, lemon juice, dill, and salt.
- ⏲ 7 min
Sear the marinated meat in a hot pan until browned and crisp at the edges.
- ⏲ 1 min
Warm the pitas briefly in a dry pan or oven to soften them.
- ⏲ 1 min
Spread tzatziki on each pita and pile on the meat, tomato, onion, and fries.
Roll up tightly and cut in half, or wrap in paper to serve.
Variations
- Chicken gyros: Use chicken thigh for a lighter version.
- Souvlaki style: Skewer and grill the meat.
- Gyros plate (merida): Serve the meat, fries, and pita separately on a plate.
- Vegetarian: Use halloumi or mushrooms.
Tips
- Slice the meat thin and keep the pan hot for crisp edges.
- Warm the pita so it stays pliable and doesn't tear when rolled.
- Squeeze the cucumber dry so the tzatziki isn't watery.
- Tucking fries inside is the authentic Greek way.
More detail and the reasons why (3)
- Do not marinate it overnight. Acid does not tenderise — that is the most widespread misconception about marinades — and a strongly acidic marinade wants under 2 hours, always; days are only for salt-based marinades going on to a long cook (what marinades do). This marinade is olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and oregano, and the meat is seared for minutes. Souvlaki uses the same Greek marinade: past two hours the lemon leaves the surface dry and chalky, which is the texture the long soak was meant to prevent.
- And this recipe already answers it in step one, by slicing the meat first. Marinating time is set by thickness because the action stops one to three millimetres in, so what decides how much of the meat a marinade reaches is the surface per unit of meat — and a thin slice tossed in a bowl has almost nothing that counts as an inside. Like the 2mm slices of bulgogi, there is no inside to worry about. Thirty minutes is not the minimum here, it is the whole of what the marinade can do.
- What the half hour buys is salt and oil, not tenderness. Salt is the thing that travels, and the oil carries the oregano, garlic and paprika evenly across the surface — which is the surface that then chars in the pan. Souvlaki works the same way; here the thin slice makes it faster still.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
More of the same kind
More from this country
✏️ Improve this recipe
Sign in to edit.
Written with AI · how we check it · Edit history
https://cookiki.com/en/r/gyros · cookiki · User contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.