The Surprising Solution for Making Döner Kebab Meat at Home

what if I told you I just figured out how to make do not keep up meat at home what you think is not a big deal because all you need is a mini rotisserie grill and you're good to go the rest is easy because that's what I thought until I tried it and now I know that it kind of works but it's also mostly useless I'll explain later no no no no I have found at least two much better and simpler ways to get a result that hits home even for a dinner aficionado like myself before we get started this video is sponsored by Squarespace my favorite all-in-one solution for everybody who once put something on a beautiful website which is in fact exactly what I'm going to do with this recipe but more on that later for now let me walk you through my journal making process and you will know more than you ever wanted about making dunam eat so there are two main things we need to get right here the first one is flavor and the second one is texture and it turns out that flavor is actually the easy part the whole trick is to make a marinade of dried herbs and spices on a paprika and oregano base those two are the key I also added some marjorie and rosemary later on I found that basil and thyme are also great additions so you know there is some room for you to play around mix those with a few scoops of salt and there's your Derna seasoning we're gonna use yogurt as the liquid component of this marinade that seems to be the go-to in most Turkish recipes I researched oh and if you want that Street food flavor don't forget a good sprinkle of MSG actually let me remind you that this is in fact what we're doing here we're not being gourmet we're not trying to be healthy no we are recreating a street food classic and all its nostalgic fast food glory speaking of which let's talk about the hard part which is the texture you know those ribbons of delicious thinly shaved meat that's crispy on one side and juicy on the other let's see how we can get that so a classic doner is a stack of interchanging layers of thin veal and minced beef sometimes beef and lamb so I fled in too few veal cutlets and added around half of our marinade to them quick massage smells great already and into the fridge we go the second part is our minced meat but this is where technique matters quite a bit if we just use ground meat the texture would be way too loose think burger patty but we need something dense almost like a sauce which means emulsified meat so I added the mince along with the rest of my marinade to my food processor helped out with a bit of milk to get things going and it went for a good few minutes until the meat almost turned into a paste but now let's talk about rotisserie grills you might have seen one before it's basically a miniature version of what a Derna place would use so I started putting my spit together layer by layer sliced meat and sausage meat and that worked quite well in the beginning but as the spit got bigger it would collapse under its own weight and spread out to the sides which means there is only one solution if you live in a city like Berlin with lots of joiner shops around you've probably witnessed them setting up shop in the morning and that's when they get their meat delivery and it's always in the shape of a nice large conical spit so I'm thinking how do they do that all right it's frozen so I somehow managed to wrap this meaty monstrosity into plastic wrap to hold its shape and into the freezer we go overnight and this actually worked quite well it's definitely not collapsing now and in fact it was so tall that I had to cut off the top to fit it into my rotisserie and now look at that the word Dona comes from a Turkish word that means to rotate and I think we're definitely doing it justice over here so at this point I'm super happy everything looks great all we got to do is wait a little the idea of course is that the outside layer cooks through and firms up before the inner core thaws and kind of spreads out to the sides again and that part actually works I mean slowly but steadily we are getting some browning we got some juices flowing I think this is how the dinner shops around the world manage their spits as well but after this step this is where the trouble started once I got my spit to crisp up nicely on the outside I started shaving up slices of meat the results were ok quite tasty actually but even though I used a really sharp sashimi knife it was very hard to do this let me explain so while growing up in Berlin me and my friends had a lot of late night during us in this life and there's an observation we made later in the day and especially at like 2:00 a.m. or something most of the donations would only have like a very thin and sad looking leftover spit there's still some meat on it but just not a lot and even like a really good earner chef would have a very very very hard time getting thin slices off of that I mean think about it a really big spit is heavy it holds itself together probably has a core that still frozen solid and once it gets tiny the statics are just completely different the entire spit as well as the layers they start jiggling around and it becomes almost impossible to get a good slice maybe if you're watching and you're into construction you could leave a comment and give a more scientific explanation of this I would really appreciate that oh and also look at the interplay between circumference and curvature to keep it short big spit thin slices small spit thick chunks and if you ever had chunks of street food great turnout meat you know that is not how it's supposed to be eaten but the real deal breaker for this machine is time it took over an hour to get it to a point where I could even start slicing it which okay that is fine for the first round considering it comes out or the fries and everything but even after that it takes at least 20 minutes for the meat to Brown again and that is just not good enough considering again the size of our spit remember we're just eating a very thin outside layer of the Derna meat and those commercial spits they're white and they're tall so even if you only brown one side of it and you shave that off you're gonna have enough meat for at least one full scent which may be even more but on a small spit like the one I used for this video I mean even if you brown the entire thing the yield is still ridiculously low so I'm sorry to report but I believe the home rotisserie at least for this use case is kind of a toy fortunately it might work but practically it just doesn't make any kind of sense to me which puts us in a bit of a tricky situation because if we can't use a rotisserie but we want that during our style meat what do we do look we've done so far is we have mimicked the optics of Derna production with the spit and everything but what if we applied some result-oriented thing we want a thin shavings of meat that are partially crispy but also juicy let's think outside the box so I made another batch of meat this time I went for a hundred percent mints it's gonna be fine guys just embrace the fast-food feel make sure to emulsify that meat really really well once it's nice and pasty we are putting it in a rectangular baking mold not too tall and then sort of making a meatloaf out of it I bake this guy at 200 degrees Celsius for around 90 minutes and this is what I ended up with the meat released a lot of fat and juice and it also shrank quite a bit but that's okay for now we're gonna rest it in the fridge and after a few hours you will find that it is super solid and super easy to slice in fact if you use a sharp knife you will get it much thinner than anything you could ever slice off one of these little rotisserie x' so we're already much much closer but the question is what do we do with this because it's cold and not crispy and I'm also not a fan of the shape yet so first I tried broiling a batch in the oven but that was a fail it really didn't look right it also was dry as cardboard so no that did not work but you know what finally did this slice your meat as thinly as you possibly can you almost want flakes and the good thing is you don't need to make even slices in fact a bit of randomness is actually desirable because it's gonna help you make it look more like the real deal now you simply want to sear those flakes in a large skillet and the fact that this meat is terribly dry is actually very helpful because it Browns really really well and the downside of course is that it's well very dry but here's a truly magic tip if you reserved the fat and juice that was released during the baking process you can now add it back in and this meat somehow just sucks it up like a sponge I've tried quite a few more things off-camera but this one this was definitely the second best way to make doing I mean at home and now what is the best way you might ask well if you're okay with the chicken turner kebab which is in fact my preferred style of Doudna then you my friend are in for a treat right after a few words from this video sponsor Squarespace you might remember that I am researching all of these during our recipes because I want to build a website that is a one-stop guide for everyone who wants to make dinner at home Squarespace makes that incredibly easy for me and in fact every single time I use Squarespace I discover some new and amazing features like for example if you have a restaurant and you set up a website through Squarespace you can let people make OpenTable reservations through the website with just a few clicks so if you feel like sharing your business which is something really cool if the world head over to Squarespace and start a completely free trial and once you're ready to launch make sure to head over to Squarespace comm / Undong to save 10% of your first purchase and now let's talk about chicken data so the big difference here is that for chicken during our minced meat is not a thing so we don't have to deal with all of that stuff instead a chicken Ternes that will be made out of actual slices of chicken meat and so when you slice that down you don't actually get those like thin ribbons that you get from minced meat no you get like like little strips of chicken little crispy strips that of course is a completely different game and that changes our entire approach check this out to a few deboned chicken thighs I am adding my spice mix salt and yogurt then I'm simply mixing those up and roasting them at 220 Celsius for about 30 minutes when they come out I slice them thinly and then I roast them for a second time along with some sliced red bell peppers just until we get some color on the outside and that you guys is their real deal dark chicken meat is almost indestructible so it stays juicy throughout the whole process and I think the result is almost indistinguishable from what you'd get at the donut shop and you know I think this is just so much better and easier than wasting your time with one of these little rotisserie in the last installment of the donut series we'll be talking about assembly and sauce so I'm gonna see you there guys [Music]

Channel: My Name Is Andong

Views: 964,270

Rating: 4.8445406 out of 5

Keywords: Döner, döner kebab, berlin döner, döner rezept, döner recipe, my name is andong

Id: TNChsYNpV0U

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Switzerdude]

Made homemade doner meat last night with minced lamb and beef. Came out pretty good. Now TODAY, I see this video (great by the way!) and find out I need to add yogurt! Learn something new every day!

[u/zStak]

Really nice recipe and video series. It comes out really good :)