Chef Joel & Jenn: Beef Gyritos on Mini Pitas with Tzatziki

Personal

Apr 1

Written By Joel

For Valentines Day Jenn got me a subscription to a service called Plated. Its a service that sends you two meals a week with all of the ingredients to cook. Its a great way to get to know new recipes and cook with ingredients that you either aren't familiar with or wouldn't think to use. I'll talk more about the service and unboxing in a different post when we restart the service with meal choices we actually choose. Sadly with everything going on we haven't had time to make an order and actually use it. Because its a weekly subscription I've just been canceling each week. Well a couple weeks ago they sent me a box by mistake (their mistake) and said we could have it for free.

Of the two meals they sent me the Beef Gyritos on Mini Pitas with Tzatziki was the one that we were even interested in trying. We both love Greek food so we were excited to give it a try. All of the ingredients come prepackaged and labeled. So if you're like Jenn and I and you aren't sure whats what, this is for you. If a recipe calls for a clove of garlic they provide a single clove of garlic. No extra, no waste, just exactly what you need for that recipe.

The idea of signing up for a service like this was to make it easier on Jenn and I to try to cook new things. Often times doing new recipes can cost a fortune when you don't have any of the spices or ingredients necessary. This is a way to figure out what we like to cook and go from there. The first step for this recipe was to chop up all the ingredients that needing chopping. We then made the Tzatziki sauce (which didn't turn out all that well) and let the meat marinate.

From there we took the peppers, onions, marinade, and steak into the pan and cooked for around ten minutes. While it was cooking we warmed the pita bread in the oven using tin foil. Actually "cooking" time was only 10-15 mins, but prep was closer to 30-45 mins.

I wish I could say it was worth it the meal just didn't turn out as well as it looked in the pictures. The meat was a tad bit chewy, the Tzatziki was not great, and the meal was anything but filling. It wasn't bad but it didn't measure up against a lot of our favorite Chef Joel & Jenn's of the past.