Homemade Pork Gyros – For Greek Souvlaki

The other day, we had a craving for Greek pork souvlaki, but there is no restaraunt close by that makes a genuine Greek souvlaki in town. A couple of fast food places claim to offer souvlaki, but it’s nothing like what you would find in Athens, Greece.

Pork souvlaki is generally made with pork gyros – and these are the thin slices from meat that has been roasting on a rotisserie (‘gyros’ in Greek literally means to “turn”). Usually, the pork is taken from the shoulder or “butt” section of the pig. We did not have pork shoulder or a rotisserie, but we did have some pork chops with a decent amount of fat on them. Could we make a Greek-style pork souvlaki at home with what we had? Kiriaki was quite confident that she could! And indeed, they were awesome, tasty, and almost as good as what you would find in Athens.

To start with, we first made our Greek pita, which you can find by clicking here (opens in a new window so you can stay on this page as well).

Then, Kiriaki got to work on preparing the pork as follows:

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 pork chops (not too lean)
• 2 pcs of round bacon or 4 bacon slices
• 2 onions coarsely chopped
• 1 tbs Kirian Greek Oregano
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp paprika
• 4 whole dried allspice berries
• 1 tbs sumac
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 glass of water
• 4 pita pies (you can see the recipe here)

DIRECTIONS
We tenderize our chops well using a mallet or some other flat heavy object. (We actually used a large wooden pestle). We don’t really mind the bone, we can remove it at this point but even better after the chops are cooked.

We mix up all the spices and give the chops a good rub. We top with one tbs of our olive oil.

We cover one of the chops with half the bacon and top it with the other chop. We do the same for the other 2 chops. We press them a bit with our hands so they join nicely.

We add the 2nd tbs of olive oil in a casserole dish and put our chops in.

We put our coarsely chopped onions on the sides.

We top with the rest of olive oil, add the water and place the lid on the casserole.

We bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour.

We take the casserole out of the oven, remove the lid and get our chops on a cutting board. Now it’s the best time to remove those bones also. We cut our chops in strips so that they look like gyros and put them back in the oven (along with the onions) for 10-15 mins with the lid off so that they get a nice colour.

Our gyros is ready to go onto those pita pies. Yuumm!

Kali Orexi!

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