Kebab

Kebab means grilled meat in Turkish. Kebab is made of lamb and beef. In the United States, this is usually called gyros meat, while a kebab is a stick with small cubes of any kind of meat or fowl and vegetables that is roasted on a grill.

There are different variants of kebab:

European:

• Döner Kebab - roasted sliced lamb or chicken loaf
• Samak Kebab - grilled fish shish kebab
• Shish Kebab - grilled cubes of meat on a stick
• Kofte Kebab - roasted and then grilled cubed beef-lamb loaf on a stick

Kebabs are normally served in pita bread with salad. Doner can be either lamb or chicken.

Enterprising take-away operators (catering generally to drunken post-pub revellers) sometimes put kebab meat on a pizza, producing a culturally-dubious "kebabpizza".

American (where it is sometimes called shish kebab or kebob):

• Beef kebab
• Chicken kebab
• Tofu kebab
• Vegetable kebab
• Turkey kebab

American kebabs consist of meat and vegetables held together with a wooden skewer and then grilled. Vegetables typically used include eggplant, tomato, bell pepper, onion and mushrooms. Americans would call lamb Döner Kebab either gyros or shwarma. European schwarma is a slightly different product, however.

Take-out kebab restaurants are common in some parts of Europe with Döner Kebab said to be the best-selling fast food in Germany. Take-out shish kebab is almost unknown in the US but take-out gyros is quite popular.

External Link

• A brief discourse on the doner kebab