Best Gyro Meat Recipe by Bestselling Author Deborah Dolen
Gyros are great and even better with fresh sun ripened mushy tomatoes and sweet Vidalia onions as well as sliced cucumbers or lettuce. The cucumber yogurt dressing (known as Tzatziki sauce) [recipe link below] and grilled pita bread make it all happen. Many people get stuck on where to get Gyro Meat? Well, if you can find it - you can safely assume it is over priced. 33% ground lamb and the rest lean ground beef with garlic and other spices mixed in - and you have home made Gyro meat! You can mix this up, roll it flat and freeze it to almost frozen if you want to cut strips. Few recipes I have seen mention lemon and if you have ever had a gyro served to you - you can see them often spritz the gyro loaf on the rotisserie with lemon. That breaks up the fat a little and definitely compliments the flavor. This is an excerpt of my bestselling Beef Jerky recipe book. The eBook also has a recipe for making jerky Greek style in a dehydrator which is not a ground type recipe as this one is.
The simple Cucumber Yogurt Sauce Recipe is here:
http://deborahdolen.blogspot.com/2012/09/cucumber-yogurt-sauce-tzatziki-by.html
To make this you can also use a jerky gun if you happen to have one. A jerky gun looks like a cake decorating tool. You can quadriple this recipe and baste it on a rotisserie or just make it jerky style in a dehydrator. Mine gets made with the oven method. I make extra and freeze it for future entertaining.
Makes 1 to 2 pounds depending on cooking method
2 pounds lean ground meat
1 pound lean ground lamb
Combine the meat and knead these spices into it:
4 tablespoons Lemon Juice [This goes on at the end to baste]
1-2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon thyme powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon oregano powder
1/2 tablespoon marjoram
1/2 tablespoon cumin powder
1/2 tablespoon black pepper
Mix all desired ingredients and press through a jerky making utensil such as “Jerky Works." The Jerky should be dried at 155 degrees and may take anywhere from 8-15 hours to dry. Absorb any excess fat on paper towels. This recipe does not store for long periods of time as non-ground beef recipes that can last for several months. If you do not have a jerky gun, you can also use the freeze and cut method used in the "Hamburger Jerky" recipe in this book.
Baste your Gyro meat with the lemon in the last hour of dehydration.
This is wonderful served with toasted pita and fresh sliced sweet onions, tomatoes, lettuce and Tzatziki sauce also known as Cucumber - Yogurt sauce. The simple recipe is in this book.
Oven method at 140 degrees could be 12 hours, but I am not really out to dry it so much, so 4 hours is fine for me.
Deborah Dolen is a Bestselling author on
Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Her books are primarily DIY related. Most of Deborah's recipes are "pinned" on Pinterest so if you want to read more unique recipes check out her board Deborah Dolen Recipes. Follow Deborah Dolen on Twitter or her Facebook fan page. Many people tell Deborah they wrote a book or want to break into writing and ask for advise. Based on the sheer amount of interest, Deborah Dolen wrote a great 3 series article titled "How to Market Your Book or Product" which comes up number one in a Google search out of millions of people competing for those words! This also demonstrates she not only knows how to market a book, she knows how you can be number one!
