Looking for a familiar flavor or something completely out of this world? Let’s try chicken gyros that seems like another world!

Curiously, this system of ours doesn’t always work perfectly. Not because we call every similar dish the same, no matter what ingredients are in there, like in the case of gnocchi, Greek salad, or Chicken fricassee, but because sometimes we peg totally different names to something that differs only marginally from the original dish, like it’s the case with gyros.

Gyros is doner kebab but with tzatziki sauce. Gyros, similarly to doner, simply means turn which refers to the vertical turn spit the meat is roasted on.

Although it seems like gyros is a lot of things due to the letter ‘s’ at the end of the word, it is only an optical illusion brought to us by the English language.

The pronunciation of the beginning of the word is none the less annoying than the ending of it. Although there were some clever dudes overseas who solved this issue by simply writing the word down as it should be pronounced. Australians use the word yiros to describe this tasty dish and that is how Greeks actually pronounce it Yee-ros too.

StavrosK · How to pronounce “gyros” (the Greek food).

The Greek gyros (Yee-ros) is generally made with pork but over the country borders other kind of meat like the less common lamb and beef or the more widely adopted chicken can be seen.

Making authentic gyros at home can be pretty hard without a vertical grill and a spit that rotates the meat around. Unless we are pretty good at DIY and really want to go with the real deal, we can get away with golden brown seared pieces of chicken from our favorite skillet.

We may just stick pieces of meat onto a skewer and stand it into the oven to roast. Apart from that being an incredibly messy task, it’ll take an eternity to wait for the meat to be seared and several eternities more for the rest of the meat after the first cut.

Sure, pieces of meat won’t be as fancy looking as in the kebab or in this case Gyros shops but with enough tzatziki and a bit of love we can create as good a Gyros as anyone in the Universe.

Ingredients

Gyros meat

2 lb /1 kg Chicken
1 Onion or red onion (finely cut)
3 cloves Garlic (finely cut)
2 teaspoons Salt
2 teaspoons Black pepper
2 teaspoons Paprika (optional)
Optional herbs: (use only two at a time)
- 2 teaspoons Oregano
- 2 teaspoons Rosemary
- 2 teaspoons Thyme
- 2 teaspoons Cumin
- 2 teaspoons Marjoram

Serving gyros

Tzatziki sauce (Check out How to make Tzatziki Sauce Recipe)
- 1 Cucumber
- 1 clove Garlic
- 2 cup / 500ml Greek yogurt
- 1 tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- Optional:
  - Dill or Mint or Parsley
  - Lemon juice
Pita (store bought, skillet or oven made) Pita Bread Recipe
Lettuce, onion, tomato and optional hot sauce

How to make Chicken gyros

We need to have stripes of meat for this, so slice the meat up.
Mix the stripes of meat with the herbs and spices in a big enough bowl. Adding a half cup of cooking oil will help us make this a smoother experience. It’s recommended to place the meat in the fridge for at least a couple of hours to marinate but in case of emergency, we can start roasting it immediately.
Sear the stripes of meat with a little oil in our favorite pan. We can also roast it on a grill.

Serving Gyros

Gyros meat can be served on its own with a bit of salad but it truly shines through some Tzatziki sauce and pita bread. Make Tzatziki sauce by mixing Greek yogurt with grated cucumber, garlic, olive oil, dill and some salt. Check out how to make Tzatziki sauce.
Fill the meat into a store bought or even better homemade pita bread. Nothing compares to some freshly made pita bread!