There are a million variations of the gyro (also called doner kebab or shawarma). The word gyro technically refers to the spit-cooked meat that’s used as a filling. At their essence, all these dishes are basically a pita or flatbread stuffed with meat, vegetables, and sauce.

I used my leftover cucumber cream cheese dip as the sauce. I put out a plate of tomato and shredded lettuce and let my family assemble their pitas to their own taste.

For the meat, I bought a leg of lamb and cut it into strips. I fed these into my grinder with the fine grind plate in place and set the meat aside.

Next, I assembled my lamb seasonings.

I used about 2 tsp of garlic and black pepper from one of those little grinder bottles, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp of marjoram, and 2 tsp of cumin. I also used fresh rosemary, Greek oregano, and mint, as well as 3/4 cup of chopped onion.

After mincing the herbs, I mixed all these ingredients into the ground lamb and then fed it back through the grinder. Lamb holds together better the more you knead it, so grinding it twice not only incorporated the seasonings but also helped it stay fairly solid after cooking.

I heated my oven to 400° and pressed the lamb mixture into a 10″ square baking dish. This cooked for about 15 minutes. I poured off the excess liquid (mostly rendered fat) and sliced the meat into 1/2″x1″ pieces. I put about three of these in each of my pita pockets, and it was perfect.

One piece of advice: buy thick pita or flatbread. The pita I bought was too thin and tended to fall apart when picked up. I wound up finishing my gyros with a fork, and that kind of defeats the purpose.

Enjoy!