dougal wrote:The thin strips of meat on the vertical skewer is what I associate with the name 'souvlaki', but its also called 'gyros' and even doner.
Whether or not its 'better' or more authentic hardly enters the discussion, the original question was about reproducing a generic London chip shop doner. And I think that means using meat minced into an anonymous paste and emulsified with binders, fillers and 'juice retainers'.
I'd be surprised if a wholesome product, as Fallow Buck describes, were close to the 'common' catering product. I can see how rusk would make it crumbly, but that's where the processing industry sprinkles in something like Transglutaminase to make sure it doesn't fall apart.
And lets remember that the use of rusk came from plural manufacturers disclosing their ingredients to breaddrink - so somehow some folk are indeed managing to bulk things out ...
Yes, while the ingredients on the few I managed to get hints on did include rusk and emulsifiers, details on what emulsifiers were used weren't specified.
Personally, I've tried egg yolk as it was listed in some of the more traditional recipes to bind meat layers to ground and was about to try Xantham gum.
The egg in the mixture seemed to cause a drying out of the finished article and xantham gum seems readily available because of the Atkins crowd who swear by it so I thought it was worth a shot.
I just wanted to thank Fallow Buck though...His method descriptions are by far the most detailed I've come across so far and an enormous help.
I did try freezing my kebab legs before cooking as I'd noted that restaurants who had them delivered always received them frozen solid and stuck them straight on the rotisserie but it's SO helpful to have this verified.
I have a chest freezer so the size issues in standing the thing up to freeze aren't an issue.
I also have the largest size kitchen aid mixer and a huge food processor which I have been looking forward to trying (again the house move halted progress) to process the meat as absolutely finely as it can possibly go. Any opinions on this method compared to grinding finely? The meats I've seen used on TV and in photographs have been absolute PASTE so I thought this would be the better way to go about things.
I'd be interested to know why the first cut is no good? Just too dried out or something?
I feel like I've become an expert in the subtle differences in kebab construction across the world in my research online, but none of them (short of a very authentic sounding recipe that used sliced meat only) ever included a detailed description to this extent FB explained.
I've tried recipe after recipe and none of them have come as close as my own efforts which have been at best pretty poor. Some of them have been so astonishingly far from even the American Gyro and still been given rave reviews on their sites that it has been a frustrating time of things to say the least.
This has been/is being the most informative bringing together of info in regards to making a proper kebab leg online so far.
God, the roads I've looked down...I was told/read (can't be sure which now) that Costco sells Gyro legs in some of it's larger stores and this lead me to go on a full scale investigation of all their stores to seek out that all important ingredients listing they'd need to have displayed on the item for sale but I couldn't find a single one that knew what I was talking about.
Random emails to restaurants in both england and Canada (Canada seems more fond of a lamb product) rather than america got me a few dead end replies and one very helpful man who's recipe turned out to be very very wrong indeed and more like meat loaf. (just a difference in expectations/experiences I supose).
Emailing english restaurants didn't get a single reply. Though in fairness most chip/doner shops have no need for web sites.
Locating cheap lamb in America is very difficult and many of my tests were conducted with beef because of this.
Not ideal I know, but having seen the almost 100 percent use of beef in American Gyros I felt it possibly wouldn't change recipes TOO much and helped me not waste enormous amounts of money into the bargain.
Also recipes created with beef and then repeated with lamb yielded a very similar product so I was confident that if I could at least get close with beef it would also work well with lamb.
I too saw that F word on kebabs and noticed the structured building process with ground lamb and also fat/meat layers...
I've had arguments with friends regarding this and some swear it's not layered ever and is only a ground product.
Personally I feel I've eaten both as some had definite striping to the cuts of meat and those that didn't didn't taste particularly different.
I've come to the conclusion that unless it's all layered meat strips, then it's still considered a doner kebab and only the solid layered meat strip version is known as a schwarmer (sp?). Around London anyway.
I also agree that the use of binding agents is only there because of the use of fillers, but it seems like it might also be needed for that specific texture to really come across.
It's hard to believe a solid 100 percent meat product would yield cuts that were quite as soft/juicy on one side, yet crispy on the other. It seems more likely they'd be a lot more solid and 'heavy'. At least all of my 100 percent meat attempts were.
Not necessarily a bad thing but again perhaps not what I'm looking for.
Agreeing on a likely mix of amounts of rusk to the right emulsifiers is the open question I guess. You really think as much as 15 percent water would also be used? Onion juice seemed to work well in the mixes I have tried, and solid blended onion seemed to cause flecks of burning as the rotisserie did it's thing.
Dougals ideas sound like a pretty good place to start to me.
If any of you know of any way to get an insider view on what the larger manufacturers really do put into the legs, that would be beyond fantastic.
Rob.