The Amazing Home-made Gyro

Being part Greek, food from the Mediterranean is one of my favorites. As we're trying to eat at home more, I thought let's bring the Greek food home, and thought I'd try gyros. First thing was first, where do we get lamb? Turns out Harmon's had a little bit of a selection, and was the only place in our area we could even find it! Hopefully it's easier to find in your area, but these are worth the trek.

There are two parts to this recipe, the gyro loaf and the tzatziki (cucumber sauce) The rest is just assembly of your amazing pita sandwich.

Part 1: The sauce

2 cups greek yogurt
1 medium cucumber - peeled, seeded and finely chopped
pinch of salt
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp red wine vinegar
5-6 leaves fresh mint finely chopped

Here is our finely seeded cucumber:

Place the chopped cucumber in a tea towel, and wring to remove excess moisture. Combine yogurt, cucumber, salt, garlic, oil, vinegar and mint in a medium mixing bowl. BAM. This stuff is harder to spell then it is to make!

Warning: This yields 2 cups of sauce. It's a lot. So cut it in half, OR plan on having a lot of dip!

Part 2: The lamb

Preheat oven to 325

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 lb ground lamb
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp dried marjoram
1 Tbsp ground dried rosemary
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 brick, wrapped in tin foil

Pulse onion in food process for 10-15 seconds, and dump out onto a tea towel. Gather up the ends of the towel and twist tightly and squeeze out as much juice as possible.

Put onion back in processor with lamb, and rest of ingredients. Process into a fine paste, about 1 minute. You'll get something that looks like this:

I know, not appetizing, but believe me, so worth it.

Place mixture into a loaf pan, making sure to press into the sides of the pan. Place a separate 13x9 pan filled about halfway with water into the oven, and place the loaf pan inside of it. (Called a water bath) and bake for 60-70 minutes until internal temperature is about 170. Remove from oven and drain off the fat.

Place pan on a cooling rack, and place the foil wrapped brick on top of the loaf.(I also recommend adding a heavy frying pan or other weight on top of the brick, as ours didn't compress as much as I wanted) Let sit for 20 minutes until core temp reaches 175. Slice thinly and serve in pita with tzatziki sauce, fresh tomatoes, sliced onions and feta cheese.