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Gyro Your Own Way

Written by Julie Kelly

Sept. 25, 2014

This recipe for Gyro Meatballs from Paleo Cupboard, is one of the few recipes I follow to the “T” regularly. My mom made it first and I fell in love. The flavor is incredible, it always turns out, and I always feel like I’m eating out when I make this for dinner.  Last night, I was out of a few things I needed to make the whole recipe, so I needed to adlib a bit. I had defrosted some of the ground beef, liver and heart mix I made last week and decided I’d use that instead of the lamb. I was also out of cucumber so I subbed fresh fennel into the tzatziki sauce.

To up the vegetables, I prepared a saute of onion, fennel and leeks with beef tallow, salt and pepper. When they were slightly golden and translucent, I added ¼ cup beef stock and simmered until it cooked almost all the way down. I added the meatballs to the pan to warm back up before plating over roasted cauliflower and serving with a fresh green salad and the tzatziki sauce.

I must say that lamb is my favorite meat, but these meatballs were so good that I’m ready to make some more right away. The liver and heart give the whole dish a much more rich and complex flavor that goes so well with the herby-lemon seasoning. They weren’t gamey or “livery” tasting at all. Just meaty, flavorful and so SO good! Adding the lemon zest is my favorite part - so pretty and kind of fancy!

This tzatziki sauce is good enough to have on hand all the time. I added a bit of fresh cilantro and a little extra lemon, in addition to what the recipe calls for. The substitution of fennel for cucumber knocked it out of the park. It added a lovely crunch, a bit more flavor, and it was less watery.

The other thing I love about this recipe is that you can double or triple it to make burgers, meatballs, or have some seasoned meat to make a hash of some sort. Either way, you can do some double duty and save yourself some time. My favorite thing to do is use 2 lbs of meat and make 4-6 burger patties for dinner that night. Then, I use the rest of the meat for making meatballs to freeze, or have later in the week.

Find some time to make this, in some fashion, this week! It’s like a night out at your favorite Greek place. Enjoy.