Preparing Lamb Shoulder For Gyros

Cooking lamb gyros on a charcoal spit is an age-old Greek tradition and one that my in-laws do regularly. Back when they owned a Greek restaurant, I remember spending Friday evenings trimming and preparing tens of kilos of lamb shoulder for the weekend. If you don't want to trim the lamb shoulder yourself, you can ask your butcher to slice a de-boned lamb shoulder into steaks no more than 2cm thick.

Maybe I'm a bit pedantic, but none seem to do it right so I just buy the de-boned lamb should and then trim it myself. I've been demonstrating the process at our BBQ classes in-store, but I thought I'd better record the process of how to prepare a lamb shoulder for gyros so you can watch it in the comfort of your own home, or at least show it to your butcher.

In this video, I'll demonstrate how to prepare a de-boned lamb shoulder for cooking Gyros. In my opinion, lamb shoulder is the best cut of meat for Gyros however you do need to trim it right so you don't end up with a mouthful of fat in your souvlaki.

Firstly, trim the excess fat from the meat.

This is a picture showing the process of trimming fat of lamb shoulder so you can use it to cook gyros

Next, cut the meat into smaller, even pieces at about 1cm thick (definitely no more than 2cm). This is our favourite Boning Knife and the ones used in the video below

This picture shows the ideal size to cut lamb shoulder for cooking Gyros

While you'll never get it perfect, cut the de-bones lamb shoulder into diameter no more than the gyros disc you'll be using. The Flaming Coals gyros discs we use are 150mm round so make sure the "steaks" are smaller than this otherwise it will be more difficult to carve.

Once your lamb is 1-2cm thick and cut into pieces smaller than your gyros disc, cover the lamb with your favourite Greek Gyros Seasoning or marinade. Based on my in-laws tried and tested gyros recipe, we have bottled it up and now sell authentic Greek Gyros seasoning for everyone to use at home