Greek Style Gyro Burgers

Now that I have Jackaroo for all my grilling needs it has given me the opportunity to expand our food preparation options to exclusively grilling.

A couple days ago we went to the “Yeero Shop” for donair/yeero/gyro/kebab and had an amazing beef something in a pita; the only downside was the price. At 25 bucks for a couple Yeero and lemonades I was full but my wallet was empty.

Today we were deciding our daily grilled meal and decided on burgers. The only issue eating burgers here is that they do not have the sharp yellow American cheddar that I have been craving so we settled on a Mediterranean flavoured burger. We lucked out with some of the food we had in the pantry and after a quick trip to the corner store we were soon munching on the most delicious juicy fresh pita burgers. There is no replacement for a standard burger but this was the next best thing.

Burgers:

I have never really understood people that buy premade burgers. They are pretty much the easiest thing to put together and always taste better. I made 8 “normal” sized burger patties.

Ingredients:

-          800g fresh ground beef

-          ¼ cup chopped fresh oregano

-          Juice from ½ a lemon

-          Couple spoons of tzatziki

-          1 egg

-          Bread crumbs (I just crumbled up the butt of an olive loaf that I had made a few days ago)

 

Directions:

Mix everything together and form into burgers. I saw on a TV show that said if you wet your hands before you start mixing beef for burgers or meatballs the meat won’t stick to you - making the clean-up a little easier.

 

 

Pita and Fixens:

For a burger I’m usually happy with mustard, ketchup, cheese and onion but for these we decided to go all out and make sure the pita was bursting with goodies.

Ingredients:

-          Pita (Our corner store has these amazing giant Lebanese pita’s that are soft, fluffy and perfect for wraps. If you can find something similar. Half the fun is pulling off little bits of pita drenched in dressing)

-          1 tomato

-          1 container of yellow cherry tomatoes

-          Heap of lettuce

-          1 red onion

-          Feta

-          More oregano

Optional:

-          Tzatziki

-          Black olives/ olive tapenade

-          Baba ghanoush

-          Hummous

-          Hot sauce

-          Colby cheese slices

To put this whole thing together we grilled the burgers and just before I pulled them off I threw on a cheese slice letting it melt over the meat. I also put the red onion in some foil and grilled it to soften it up.

 

 

While I was drinking beer and looking at the BBQ Jess chopped up the veggies and mixed tzatziki with the lettuce and feta with the tomatoes and oregano. We spread the “optional” ingredients over the pita, sliced a burger in half and piled everything else in (I ended up putting two burgers in mine and all the “optionals”).

 

 

My wife is so hot!!!

 

 

This was definitely a messy meal so we grabbed our beers and ate on the patio while hovering over our plates. We still both ended up with food on our shirts! They were actually better than the pictures look. Like most things the key is to have fresh ingredients, the beef was juicy with a little crust from the grill, the lettuce had that wonderful crunch and the juices from the tomatoes blended the flavours together perfectly.

Nom nom nom!