Gyros

Made this for lunch just now. I've tried getting the beef right for these darn things a bunch of different ways. Internet people have all sorts of ways they've tried to get it just like the restaurants, but the only one I've seen that looked like it would realistically work was this massive bearded greek dude shoving like 5 pounds of lamb shoulder onto two spits and throwing it on a charcoal grill. I'm just trying to make lunch here, though. I've tried to make a mini spit using the rotisserie attachment in my toaster oven, and that looked and smelled great, but the meat completely dried out and was nasty inside.

Other internet ideas were like to use ground meat and form a really tight meatloaf and bake it in the oven, then you can cut thin slices off it that look a lot like the gyro places, but it's lacking the super brown crispy outside you want.

This time I bought some really thin ribeye steaks (like less than 1/2") that people usually use to make carne asada. I figured with how thin they were I'd want the pan to be really fricking hot, so I did a test run with one of them with the heat cranked all the way up on my stove and a cast iron skillet. Darn near lit my kitchen on fire, like the oil in the pan actually just made a poof noise and burst into flames. The steak didn't get burned though, even with me moving it around in the pan to smother the fire. The steak was a perfect medium rare cooking it just one minute a side. Problem, though: medium rare steak is too chewy for sandwich or sandwich-adjacent preparations.

Finally, I marinated the rest of the steaks and cooked them with slightly less heat (although still enough that the pan was smoking up my kitchen) for 2 minutes a side. They're pretty well done, but perfect for a gyro because you can bite through the pieces so easily. Then I put this together and smashed the whole thing into my face. The end.