Oh, My Gyro!

About author / Sarah Christine Bolton

Coffee addict; professional food writer; food fusion. Her slow cooker recipes go above and beyond your normal crockpot fare.

For one of our first dates, my boyfriend brought Greek food from a nearby restaurant to the campus where we were both going to college. We met under the trees, at a stone picnic table. He opened the brown paper bag and pulled out two salads (“I didn’t order myself a salad,” he said, confused). I searched for forks and napkins; there were none. We ate gyro salads with our fingers. He was flustered and embarrassed. I thought it was funny and adorable that he wanted to impress me so much. It must have worked; I married him.

The history of gyros is not easily traced. The main ingredients that make up a gyro (lamb, flat bread, grilled vegetables and seasonings) were a part of the diet of ancient people living in the Middle East. But when all those ingredients came together in the marriage that is gyro is hard to say. In fact, gyros are not found in classic Greek cookery or even listed in Greek cookbooks.

The main difference between gyros and their popular cousin, shish kebabs, is that gyro meat (traditionally a mixture of ground lamb and beef) is seasoned with paprika, lemon, and garlic and cooked on a skewer rotating over a heat source (Some sources claim that this practice dates back to the time of Alexander, when his troops would cook chunks of meat on their swords. Let’s just hope they sanitized those things after battle). Thin slices of the meat are cut off and rolled up into pita bread with sauce and garnishes. My personal favorites are tomatoes and black Greek olives.

Olives have always been one of my favorite things about Greek food. When I was a kid, I used to take a can of black olives and stick them, one-by-one, onto all ten fingers. Slowly, I would eat them, savoring the silky and salty flavor.

Even now, I can easily go through half a can on my own. Two summers ago, a college friend and I drove across the country-from Idaho back to Mississippi, where we were both enrolled. During the trip, I was so concerned about having to pay for tuition that I was determined to exist for a week on a box of canned food. Besides the collard greens, beets, and refried beans, I also had several cans of black olives. While the miles of black asphalt passed underneath us, we listened to a mix CD and popped olives into our mouths.

So it is that the gyros we might order in a Greek restaurant are a fairly modern invention. Most food historians would agree that both the name and the product originated relatively recently in New York City. They were marketed as a fast food, and were no doubt convenient to busy New Yorkers, who could hold a gyro in one hand and go.

The word gyro (pronounced “year-oh”) supposedly first appeared in print in 1970, and means a “turn” in Greek. Some food historians speculate that the word has more to do with the Italian-American “Hero” sandwich than anything Greek.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1/2 pound ground lamb
• 1/2 pound ground turkey
• 1/2 onion, chopped finely
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• salt, to taste

***Tzatziki Sauce***

• 1 small cucumbers
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons mint
• 1 lemon, juiced
• salt, to taste

***Extras***

• lettuce
• chopped tomato
• olives
• feta cheese
• pita bread