Turkish VS Greek
Does anyone know the difference between a Turkish gyro and a Greek one?
-
turkish gyro is made out of sliced meat.
greek gyro is made out of ground meat.
texture and spices are different.
i also noticed turkish people are more passionate about making/eating gyro and greek people are more like doing it just for a filler.›2 Replies-
re: yumyumyumyum
Caroline1
Jun 24, 2010 03:02 PM
I suspect there may be a conflict between Greek Greek gyros and American Greek gyros happening here. When I lived in Greece, I can't recall ever having a gyro that wasn't the sliced meat packed vertically on a horizontal skewer. Some shops in Greece did have the ground meat with bulgur filler, but they also had the "real" stuff, so I never ordered it once I tried it and got serious indigestion. But i will quickly add that once the outside "ruffly" layer was sliced away, it was very similar in texture to the ground meat/bulgur type of gyro with one exception already mentioned: The bulgur absorbs the fat and keeps it inside the meat as it cooks whereas the sliced/stacked meat exudes the fat into the tray below. But that was years ago, so god knows what has happened to food in Greece since then!
Oh, and a point I failed to cover yesterday is that in Greece and in Turkey, there is one big difference between street gyros/doner kebabs. In Turkey, freshly crushed/chopped mint is ALWAYS included in with the lamb and yogurt/cucumber sauce and thinly silced red onions. Sometimes a few sprigs of fresh dill too, but not always. However, in Greece I never was offered mint in a gyro. When I asked, they didn't have it on hand.
But it all gets murky in America!
-
-
-
Caroline1
Jun 23, 2010 11:42 AM
"Gyro" simply means "turning" or "around" in Greek. It's a very old method of cooking, and basically it's meat sliced thin (cross cut thin slices of a roast or chicken) and fed onto a skewer in multiple layers that are then roasted vertically. The Turkish name for gyros is doner kebab. The U.S. seems to prefer the term "gyro" while Europeans often prefer doner kebab, especially in Germany where there are a lot of Turks in residence.
The ground meat variation came about as a shortcut instead of all the slicing and packing layers on layers. The advantage to the layers on layers is that shopkeepers often got creative and instead of just doing chicken, lamb, or beef (pork is a late comer), they would layer different meats for different flavor combinations. And that's a lot easier to do with ground meat, however the ground meat requires fillers (often bulgur) it to help it cling to the skewer which the layered meats do not require. The original verical rotisseries were always charcoal or wood, never gas. Gas and electrtic are modern contributions.
In Greece, they often include French fries inside the gyro, along with tzatziki, and thinly sliced onions (usually red). I've never had French fies inside a doner kebab in Turkey. The problem with these great and wonderful traditional foods from other countries is that once they sneak past the Statue of Liberty, give em a few months and you'll hardly recognize them! <sigh>
›2 Replies-
re: Caroline1
Caroline1,
I, too, bemoan what happens to traditional foods from other countries when they hit American shores, becoming blander, sweeter, softer, sometimes higher in fat, and easier and faster to prepare--often at a cost in taste. That's what happens most of the time, but sometimes we Americans improve on the originals: I know this is heresy, but we do pizza here much better than the Italians. Still, I agree with your point.-
re: gfr1111
Caroline1
Jun 23, 2010 06:49 PM
The worst pizza I have ever had in my entire life was from a lunchwagon outside the ruins of Olympia, Greece. It was an "individual" pizza, about 20cm (about 8") in diameter, three quarters of an inch thick, and about as flavorful as concrete, which was its texture. However, as I dropped it in the trash can I thought it was a fitting snack. It was like trying to eat a discus! But it probably had a lot less fat content than an American pizza.... '-)
-
-
-
My husband, who is from Greece, thinks that they must be basically the same.Turkey occupied Greece for many years and mcuh of the cuisine is the same. Istanbul used to be the seat of the Orthodox church so at one time the gyro could have been pork but not now that it is Muslim.
-
In Chicago, the Greek establishment, the Parthenon Restaurant, on Halsted Street used to carry on its menu an explanation of the origin of the gyro, which I believe was also confirmed in an article (circa the 1970s) in "Chicago Magazine". Bill and Chris Liakuros, the owners of the Parthenon, remembered the super crispy, ultra-thin grilled meat (probably lamb) from their youth and wanted to duplicate it. The goal was to obtain as much "char" as possible.
They decided to take lamb scraps, pork scraps, and maybe beef scraps (I can't remember) with various Greek spices and mold them onto a spit. They then rotated the spit vertically and played a gas flame over the surface of the five foot long, round, molded meat. The meat quickly charred on the outside and could be carved off the edge of the rotating meat with a sharp knife. The thickness of the meat was about a quarter of an inch.
Then they laid the inch to two inch wide and about three to six inches long meat carvings (remember, about on quarter inch thick), sizzling hot, on a bed of thinly sliced raw onions.
Gyros became so popular that they founded a separate company to sell the equipment and the molded rolls of meat to restaurants throughout the country.
(Unfortunately, as is so often the case, restaurateurs throughout the country bastardized the process so that in many places what you get is something with no char, heated in a microwave oven, and bearing a disappointing resemblance to pieces of meat loaf with with some Greek spices. The raw onions disappeared also and people started stuffing the meatloaf-like meat, carved way too thick, into thick pita bread and topping it with tzaziki (cucumber and yogurt) sauce. It's not bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to the properly made original.)
So, to answer your question, my understanding is that the gyro is a Chicago invention, created by two Greek-American restaurant owners. The Turks had nothing to do with it, but then, neither did the Greeks.
›2 Replies-
re: gfr1111
bagelman01
Jun 23, 2010 05:02 AM
thanks for the history lesson....
But I think the OP was questioning the difference between Gyros served by Greek-Americans and Turkish Americans in their food establishments.
The description of how the guys at the Parthenon made their gyro meat is little different than SHWARMA ( but without pork) made and served in Israel and Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
I certainly ate it there many years before the Parthenon creation.
-
re: gfr1111
The contribution of the Liakuros brothers was the heating method used in their gyros machines--vertical gas burners that produce a fair amount of infrared heat as well as direct thermal. A lot of these machines are used in Mexican restaurants for pork al pastor as well as various Middle Eastern restaurants for shawerma or doner kabab.
The meats and spicing differ a lot both within and between gyros, shawerma and doner kabab. I do not recall pork being used in gyros here in Chicago; the question is the relative proportions of beef and lamb. There a big variations among shawerma including relative use of beef and lamb and whether the restaurant is Assyrian, Lebanese or Palestinian.
Greek-Americans in the Chicago area used a lot of beef instead of lamb because beef was more readily available and cheaper than lamb from the 1950s until comparatively recently.
-
-
bagelman01
Jun 22, 2010 06:53 PM
For starters>>>
The Turkish Gyro won't be made of Pork (Muslims don't eat pork).
The Greek gyro may be pork or lamb, or a combination of meats (if it's shaped and formed).Remember, modern Greece was a province of Turkey until the turn of the 19/20th centuries, and there is little difference in theri cuisines except where the item is affected by religious restrictions.
›2 Replies
