Call it a delicacy, call it a meal, call it “junk food,” however anyone tries to describe it, the truth is that gyros is pure love!
Thin strips of meat, enhanced with spices, slow-roasted for hours, slightly fatty, crispy, and succulent – this is the beloved gyros.
Homemade or from a grill house, it is hard for anyone who loves meat to resist it. Fortunately, for all of us, there are plenty of good grill houses with gyros in every neighborhood, and that is where we satisfy our cravings.
Gyros, however, can absolutely be made at home, without any complicated process, nor does it require rare ingredients. With a few lovely spices, we can easily make a gyros worth talking about.
The Secret to Success Lies in the Quality of the Ingredients
Choose the meat you want, chicken or pork, cut it into relatively thin slices, season it with spices, garlic, onion, mustard, and bake it.
The combination of spices and herbs we use for gyros depends on personal taste. For example, we can add plenty of garlic if we like it, or omit it if its flavor bothers us. Here, of course, you can use garlic confit, which is much milder in flavor and very easy to digest.
You can use the paprika you like—smoked, hot, or sweet—you can use mustard in cream or powder form, and you can make the gyros as spicy or as mild as you want depending on the peppers.
What you really should not skip is the base of this particular marinade, which is strained yogurt. The yogurt helps tenderize the meat and enhances the flavor.
Choose good tomatoes, even though we are still in winter, find a nice sweet dry onion or alternatively a fresh one, and if you like, finely chop a little parsley too, and you have a great accompaniment for your gyros.
And if you are in the mood and also make the homemade souvlaki pitas then you will have turned your home into the “kingdom of souvlaki feasting”!
We love to hate gyros! Happy Tsiknopempti!
Ingredients for Homemade Chicken Gyros
- 1 kg chicken fillet, breast and thigh
- 200 g strained yogurt
- 60 ml olive oil
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
- crushed garlic (as many cloves as you like)
- 1 tsp ground pepper
- 1 tsp ground coriander (dried)
- 1 tsp paprika (I used a mix of sweet and smoked)
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 large dry onion, cut in half
- 3–4 slices of tomato
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Instructions
In a bowl, add the yogurt, olive oil, spices, and garlic.
Grate the zest from about half a lemon. Squeeze the juice from half the lemon. Add salt as well.
Mix well until you have a homogeneous mixture.
Dip the chicken fillets one by one into the yogurt mixture, making sure they are well coated on all sides.
Waiting for Proper Marination
Layer the fillets in the bowl, cover, and place them in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.
Peel and cut the onion in half, and also cut 4 tomato slices about half a centimeter thick.
Assembling the Gyros
In a baking dish, place the onion halves with their flat side facing down.
Insert a wooden skewer for souvlaki into each onion half, with the pointed end facing upward.
Take the chicken fillets one by one and thread them onto the skewers. Make sure they are arranged fairly neatly one on top of the other so they cook evenly. Rest the first fillet on the onions—this is our base—and then secure each additional fillet onto the previous one. We want to build as sturdy a stack of fillets as possible.
As we stack the fillets, we can also add extra salt, pepper, and whichever of the spices we used in the marinade, such as coriander or paprika, in between the layers.
Place the tomato slices on top, add a little more salt and pepper, and a little olive oil.
Cover the fillets with baking paper and then with aluminum foil.
Bake in a preheated oven at 200°C for 40–45 minutes.
Remove the dish from the oven and take off the aluminum foil and baking paper.
Spoon a little of the juices from the baking dish over the fillets and bake again for 15–20 minutes so the meat can brown.
When it is ready, remove it from the oven and with a sharp knife begin slicing it as thinly as possible.
Remove the skewers as well.
Use a fork to help, and with the knife cut any pieces that are thicker.
Mix the gyros pieces well so they absorb the flavor from the juices in the dish.
How to Make Crispy Gyros
If we want the gyros to be crispier, we can place the dish under the grill again for 2–3 minutes; otherwise, we can serve it immediately.
We need tomato, onion, tzatziki, grilled souvlaki pitas, and we are ready!
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