I love me some gyros.
I find that just an "average" gyro from a restaurant is better than most "good" burger places.
But I have been unable to replicate the magic of gyros at home. I've tried a few recipes I've found online (including Cook's Illustrated), but none of them have done it for me. I've been to a couple local middle-eastern/halal markets, and all of them that do carry gyro meat carry only the Midamar brand. While that is obviously sensible (it's one of the, if not the, biggest halal meat producers in the US), it's only available in pre-sliced form, which is too thin. It's good, but it still just doesn't taste quite right if I can't get a nice mouthful of gyro meat. And living here in the Dallas/Fort Worth (FW side) part of Texas means I don't enjoy as much variety in middle-eastern markets as other metropolitan areas.
Looking online, I found a website that actually sells the Kronos brand direct to consumers (Kronos is, I think, the biggest supplier of gyro meat in the US, so if you've had a gyro, it was probably Kronos), in both the slices and full cones. The cones are what I want, as I can then slice them up how I want and refreeze them. But, shipping is crazy (at least $40), and I just don't trust frozen meat to be shipped to me and stay frozen, but maybe that's just me being paranoid. Maybe in the middle of winter I could do it, but it's already starting to hit the 70s as a high here in Texas. I could probably ask the managers/owners of some of the markets or restaurants if I could buy a cone from them, but that requires, well, social skills I don't have (I am a very anti-social person), and I doubt they would order $100+ of gyro meat for some stranger.
Saturday, I tried a new middle-eastern market I found about 30 minutes away from me. I wandered around, was a bit disheartened when I saw the meat case had, you guessed it, Midamar brand. But as I reached the end of the freezer aisle, on the top shelf, there it was: a box of two 10-pound Kronos gyro cones (all beef, to be specific, rather than a mix of beef and lamb). I asked the nearby lady working in the back how much it was (it wasn't labeled), and she said it wasn't meant for sale, that it was just being stored there. Likely my crestfallen look was what made her offer to go ask the manager/owner about it. Turns out, he said that it had been ordered while he was out of town instead of the pre-sliced gyro meat (they don't have the rotating gyro cookers there yet, they're still fairly new store). Being a meat product, he couldn't return it, so he thought he would just store it away until they eventually got the gyro cookers later this year. But, he then offered to sell the box to me for $75 (it was, after all, costing him money by just sitting there taking up freezer space), and there was much rejoicing on my part.
Long story short, I now have 20 pounds of gyro meat I am gleefully slicing up and repackaging into vacuum-sealed bags to hopefully last me a year or so.
And this stuff is good.
And now I need to go to a local market I know of that sells tubs of the Kronos brand tzatziki sauce.
I find that just an "average" gyro from a restaurant is better than most "good" burger places.
But I have been unable to replicate the magic of gyros at home. I've tried a few recipes I've found online (including Cook's Illustrated), but none of them have done it for me. I've been to a couple local middle-eastern/halal markets, and all of them that do carry gyro meat carry only the Midamar brand. While that is obviously sensible (it's one of the, if not the, biggest halal meat producers in the US), it's only available in pre-sliced form, which is too thin. It's good, but it still just doesn't taste quite right if I can't get a nice mouthful of gyro meat. And living here in the Dallas/Fort Worth (FW side) part of Texas means I don't enjoy as much variety in middle-eastern markets as other metropolitan areas.
Looking online, I found a website that actually sells the Kronos brand direct to consumers (Kronos is, I think, the biggest supplier of gyro meat in the US, so if you've had a gyro, it was probably Kronos), in both the slices and full cones. The cones are what I want, as I can then slice them up how I want and refreeze them. But, shipping is crazy (at least $40), and I just don't trust frozen meat to be shipped to me and stay frozen, but maybe that's just me being paranoid. Maybe in the middle of winter I could do it, but it's already starting to hit the 70s as a high here in Texas. I could probably ask the managers/owners of some of the markets or restaurants if I could buy a cone from them, but that requires, well, social skills I don't have (I am a very anti-social person), and I doubt they would order $100+ of gyro meat for some stranger.
Saturday, I tried a new middle-eastern market I found about 30 minutes away from me. I wandered around, was a bit disheartened when I saw the meat case had, you guessed it, Midamar brand. But as I reached the end of the freezer aisle, on the top shelf, there it was: a box of two 10-pound Kronos gyro cones (all beef, to be specific, rather than a mix of beef and lamb). I asked the nearby lady working in the back how much it was (it wasn't labeled), and she said it wasn't meant for sale, that it was just being stored there. Likely my crestfallen look was what made her offer to go ask the manager/owner about it. Turns out, he said that it had been ordered while he was out of town instead of the pre-sliced gyro meat (they don't have the rotating gyro cookers there yet, they're still fairly new store). Being a meat product, he couldn't return it, so he thought he would just store it away until they eventually got the gyro cookers later this year. But, he then offered to sell the box to me for $75 (it was, after all, costing him money by just sitting there taking up freezer space), and there was much rejoicing on my part.
Long story short, I now have 20 pounds of gyro meat I am gleefully slicing up and repackaging into vacuum-sealed bags to hopefully last me a year or so.
And this stuff is good.
And now I need to go to a local market I know of that sells tubs of the Kronos brand tzatziki sauce.
