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| Shawarma (in arabic countries), Döner Kebap or just Döner in Turkey |
Shawarma are thin slices of lamb or beef roasted on a vertical spit that turns and is generally - but not only - served in pita bread accompanied by vegetables and some sauces. It is originally from the Middle East and is undoubtedly the "fast-food" of the area, with all the good and bad that the term entails. It is also becoming the most requested fast food in countries like Germany, where the presence of two million Turkish immigrants has made it fashionable. The name changes according to the country despite being, more or less, the same as it happens with many foods from the Eastern Mediterranean. In Turkey it is called döner kebap and in Greece "gyros".
As we said at the beginning, shawarma is made up of slices of meat that are threaded onto a broadsword until it looks like a large spool of thread. A spool of thread weighing a few kilograms, obviously. It is placed in a machine that is nothing more than a rotating lathe that has a series of gas thermal radiators at the rear, exactly the same as gas stoves. The fire heats up the meat and the operator, with a special motorized knife most of the times, is skinning the reel to the other side, thus collecting the meat that is already roasted. The result is extremely fine slices, one step away from the fineness required by carpaccio. The way to serve this meat is very varied. They are used in the famous Iskender Kebap but the usual thing is to serve it inside a pita bread accompanied by tomato, lettuce, red cabbage, pickles etc and some yogurt-based sauce or a spicy type (most of the time ). The sandwich is usually grilled before serving.
Now we are going to explain the vocabulary mess that people do talking about shawarma, döner and so on.
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| Kebap, in this case Sis Kebap. Any grilled meat could be named kebap but usually is understood by default as meat skewer |
Kebap is a Persian word that means "grilled meat" and has passed into the Turkish language. In fact, Turkish had a lot of Persian words that after the Atatürk reform were replaced by Turkish terms.
In any case, it seems that for the expression "kebap" they found no alternative.
It can be made with lamb, beef, chicken, or even fish. If we do not add anything else to the word, it refers exclusively to a meat skewer, that is, blocks of meat strung on a rod and grilled. However, in Turkey it is not usually said simply kebap but generically, if the meat is beef or lamb, it is called sis kebap (pronounced shish kebap). If the meat on the skewer is chicken it is called "tavuk kebap" since tavuk is chicken in Turkish.
Döner is a word of Turkish origin that comes from the verb "dönmek", literally "to go around". Therefore döner kebap is "the grilled meat that goes around". In this case we are no longer referring to the normal kebap, but to the spinning reel that we have seen so many times in an oriental fast food restaurant.
When they serve us the döner kebap inside a pita bread we are consuming an "ekmek arasi döner" (where ekmek is the Turkish word for bread) and if they give it to us in a kind of rolled bread it is a dürüm döner.
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| Ekmek arasi döner in Turkey, Gyros in Greece, but many times you find this kind of sandwich named "döner kebap" or simply "döner", mainly outside Turkey |
But if we are in a Greek restaurant there is no longer talk of döner or kebap or shawarma, only "gyros", which is basically a meat sandwich.
So, remember :
Kebap : Grilled meat
Sis Kebap : Grilled meat of lamb or beef
Tavuk Kebap : Grilled meat of chicken
Döner Kebap : Fines slices of grilled meat obtained from a reel
Döner : Short for Döner Kebap, used almost for everything (but most of the time wrongly)
Ekmek arasi döner : sandwich with slices of meat, usually inside pita bread. Most of the times is not named like this, and döner referes to it (wrongly, but very common mistake).
Dürum : rolled sandwich with slices (döner) inside
Shawarma : Same as döner kebap, but so named in any arabic country
Gyros : Same like Ekemk arasi döner but in Greece. Rarely in Greece döner is served in the plate, just in sandwich.
I hope I have solved your doubts.