Chicken Gyros

"The quintessential Mediterranean street food--I lived off these as a student in Malta, and I've been tweaking my recipe to match the flavors I remember. I think I finally nailed it down! Note, please: It is important to use GOOD lemons, because if your lemon juice isn't top notch quality, this just won't be as good. Also try to use fresh pitas (either from a deli or make your own!)--old pitas aren't as flexible and won't be as easy to work with. Prep time does not include overnight marination/sauce making time."
 
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Ready In:
30mins
Ingredients:
16
Yields:
4 gyros
Serves:
4
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ingredients

  • Marinade

  • 2 lemons, juice of
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 large garlic cloves, peeled and roughly diced
  • 1 tablespoon fresh oregano, minced
  • 1 pinch salt (to taste)
  • 1 lb chicken breasts or 1 lb chicken breast tenders, cut into 1-inch pieces
  • Tzatziki Sauce

  • 1 cup whole milk yogurt (you can use low or no fat, but it isn't as creamy then)
  • 12 lemon, juice of
  • 1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely diced (use more if you like, I'm not the biggest cucumber fan, so I just use a little for crunch)
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1 pinch salt (to taste)
  • Trimmings

  • 4 cooked pita breads
  • 1 large tomatoes, cut into 16 wedges
  • 12 small white onion, cut into vertical slices
  • Materials

  • wooden skewer (soak for 30 minutes before using)
  • 2 squares aluminum foil, 12-inch square, cut in half diagonally into triangles
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directions

  • The day before you plan to cook these, mix up the marinade ingredients (excluding chicken) in a bowl (use one that will fit all your chicken inside). Whisk till oil is well incorporated. Taste and add salt as needed. When seasoning is correct, add chicken and cover. Refrigerate overnight. If you're in a hurry (i.e. you're not doing this the night before), let the mixture marinate on the counter for at least 30 minutes before cooking.
  • Also the day before you plan to cook these, make the sauce. Place yogurt in the center of a clean piece of cheesecloth (I use a kitchen towel--it works just as well). Bring up the sides and twist so that yogurt is all wrapped up in a nice little bundle. Secure towel and hang yogurt over your sink (I do this at night and just tie the towel around the arm of my faucet). Let yogurt drain overnight (12-24 hours). The longer it drains, the thicker your sauce will be. When yogurt has drained to your liking, scrape it off the towel/cheesecloth and into a small bowl. Add lemon juice, diced cuke, and garlic; mix well. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt if needed (some yogurt brands are saltier than others, so you may not need any salt at all). Let sit for at least 15 minutes before serving so flavors can blend. This gets better and better the longer it sits! (Again, if you're in a hurry and not doing this the night before, just stir everything together for the sauce--it'll be runnier, but you'll live!).
  • When you're ready to make the gyros, preheat your grill (charcoal is best); meanwhile, prep your tomatoes and onion. Thread chicken onto soaked skewers, leaving a little space between each piece. Cook skewers for a couple minutes on each side, turning once, till done.
  • When chicken is all cooked, throw your pitas on the grill to heat up (and get that smoky/grillly taste!), turning once. When your pitas are hot (and nice and flexible), take them of the grill. Working with one pita at a time, place pita on foil in your hand. Lay a skewer down the middle of the pita, and curl the pita around the meat with your hand while you pull out the skewer. Open the pita back up and top with tomato wedges and onion, dollop with the sauce, then wrap foil around the bottom half of the pita securely (so it won't leak and/or lose any of the filling!). Eat!
  • These are great fresh, but I usually cook extra to have for other meals during the week--keep all the ingredients separate till you're ready to eat, then just reheat the chicken and pitas in the microwave before assembling. I also often take these as camping food--freeze the chicken in the marinade and let it marinate as it thaws (usually takes 2-3 hours)--cooks the same from that point (and no messy dishes to wash!).

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Reviews

  1. Tasted delicous but was way too much work. I would have marinated the chicken in a greek pre-made marinade and bought tzatziki sauce. Definately bbq the chicken.
     
  2. These were excellent, especially right off the charcoal grill!! Felt like I was eating them right from the restaurant. I only got a chance to marinade for a short time and it still tasted wonderful. My only comment is that there was too much Tzatziki sauce for the amount of chicken we made. We actually got about 6 gyros out of this recipe, maybe our pita bread was smaller. For that amount of chicken, next time I'd probably make a half a cup of yogurt so there wasn't so much left over. Oh, and we didn't do the aluminum foil thing either, it wasn't that messy. We also topped ours with lettuce and green peppers just because we had some. VERY GOOD!!
     
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

<p><img src=http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/susied214/permanent%20collection/adoptedspring08.jpg border=0 alt=Photobucket /> <br /> <br />Hubby and I are currently living in St. Paul, MN in a great little neighborhood with tons of independent businesses. We have restaurants, natural foods coops (yes, plural!!), libraries, neighborhood movie theaters, everything is easy walking or biking distance--we love it! We enjoy biking a lot, too, and the Twin Cities have a fantastic network of bike trails, tons of things to do and see?we?ve found the perfect location! We currently live in an apartment, so our gardening attempts are limited to 3 large pots of herbs (one is all basil, the others are a mix of rosemary, tarragon, thai basil, mint, curry plant, sage, thyme, and oregano). We're saving for a house, so eventually we'll have a yard to plant more veggies in, but for now the herb pots do pretty well! <br /> <br />I enjoy cooking in my spare time (well, and my not-so-spare time, too...my hubby, who also loves to cook, accuses me of planning way-too-elaborate weeknight meals, but he never complains once he starts eating...no matter how late it is!) We are pretty adamant about eating healthy and sustainable foods. I try to make a point to source the majority of my ingredients as locally as possible, and I'm very lucky to have the wonderful St. Paul farmer's market available year round (though in the winter my choices are limited to fresh eggs, organic/free-range meat of all sorts, cheese, honey, baked goods...limited, right?...poor me!...in the summer the market is bursting with all that plus all manner of vegetables, and I've never met a vegetable there I didn't like). I also eat a good deal of wild game meat (elk, deer, antelope) because my family (who still live in MT) ship a box of hunting season bounty to us every winter. What doesn't come from the farmers market or the wild game express comes from my local natural foods co-op (St. Paul's Mississippi Market), which has a plethora of local products to choose from as well! <br /> <br />I try to eat as healthfully as possible, so if I make your recipe, I may alter it to fit my preferred diet (i.e. I'll cut down on fat, add veggies, change cuts of meat, cut down on cheese and certain condiments like mayo, etc.). I will still rate the recipe unless I pretty much don't follow it at all, in which case I'll just leave a comment with what I did--I always like to see what others have done with recipes, but I don't think it's fair to grade the recipe if I didn't actually follow it! I won?t generally make a recipe if it calls for ingredients I don?t like (and can?t sub out for something I do like), so most of my ratings are pretty high for that reason. I?ve never really understood people who try a recipe and then give it a very low rating only because they don?t like the ingredients called for. Anyhow. <br /> <br />My rating system for recipes is pretty simple. I won?t give a star rating to a recipe if I don?t follow it fairly closely. If I do give your recipe a star rating, this is what it means: <br />5 stars = fantastic flavor or unique (and tasty) &amp; the recipe worked as written?would definitely make it again <br />4 stars = good flavor &amp;/or the recipe needed only some minor changes to work?would likely make again <br />3 stars = the recipe needed a fair bit of alteration to be edible?might try it again, but would make some major changes <br />2 stars = good idea in theory, bad recipe in practice?would only try it again (with massive changes) if I?m feeling ambitious/creative <br />1 star = inedible?would not be trying it again</p>
 
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