Greek Lamb Gyro Skillet Recipe
Enjoy all the flavors of a gyro sandwich in this Greek lamb gyro skillet! Made with seasoned ground lamb, potatoes, cherry tomatoes and mustard greens with feta cheese and creamy tzatziki sauce. It’s a simple one-pan dish that’s also perfect for meal prep!
This post was sponsored by WP Rawl Farms. Thanks for supporting the brands that make this blog possible!
I’m back with my final recipe for this 2020 partnership with WP Rawl’s Nature’s Greens, highlighting their seasonal bagged mustard greens. WP Rawl is a local to me farm that’s one of the nations largest growers of green leafy vegetables, and I’ve been working for them a couple years now to show off my personal favorite green leafy – mustard greens! It’s hard to think of a better recipe to highlight mustard greens than this Greek lamb gyro skillet, with potatoes, ground lamb, tomatoes and peppery mustards, served with crumbled feta and creamy tzatziki sauce. Even better - it’s made in one pot, so it’s perfect for weeknight cooking or meal prep!
Because WP Rawl is really wonderful about positive nutrition messaging, they wanted me to share some tips for how to build in non-diet healthy habits with food. I really love this topic, and just spent a TON of time digging into the research on building health promoting habits for my upcoming book on gentle nutrition, which will have a a whole chapter on the topic.
Thanks to this diet culture we all live in, most of the time when you read about building “healthier” habits with food, it’s all about stopping a “bad” habit or giving up a “bad” food. But this restrictive approach isn’t helpful for actually improving health (which is SO much more than food and nutrition anyway). For starters, there are no bad foods, and while certainly there are some foods that contain more vitamins, minerals, and fiber than others, in the greater context of health, giving up foods just leads to feeling restricted. Restriction creates stress, and stress, well…it’s not so great for our health. Plus, restriction doesn’t actually lead to eating less of a food in the long run anyway. If you’ve ever tried to give up sugar, you know this to be true! So even if a food truly were “unhealthy” (it’s not), restricting it still wouldn’t be the answer.
Instead, when you think about building healthier eating habits, I encourage you to think about adding in vs. subtracting. How can you build in simple behaviors that help improve the overall quality of your eating patterns? What are low energy input things you can do that make it easier to include more nutrient rich foods? Here’s some examples:
Use a grocery delivery service to replenish your fridge each week with some fresh fruits and vegetables you enjoy
Learn a few recipes for simple vegetable side dishes you’re actually excited to eat. Might I suggest these bacon braised mustard greens?
If you have time on the weekend, meal prep an easy make ahead dish to pack for lunch.
Stock your office or car with some satisfying snacks, so you don’t come home feeling ravenously hungry.
Create a Pinterest board or notebook with 30 minute or less recipes you know and love.
Experiment with whole grains you haven’t tried before. While grains like teff, amaranth, and millet are common in other areas of the world, they may be new to you, and you may discover a new favorite!
Keep your pantry and freezer stocked with ingredients to make easy and enjoyable pantry meals, like pasta, frozen vegetables, frozen or canned fish, canned chili/soups, and canned beans.
Remember, at the end of the day, nutrition isn’t a black and white thing. Healthy eating is flexible eating, and when you remember that, it’s easier to look at building health promoting habits in a flexible way too! In the book Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch talk about “most of the time” eating, and I think that’s a helpful phrase to keep in mind.
How to Make This Greek Gyro Skillet Recipe
This Greek lamb gyro skillet is pretty simple to make, thanks to WP Rawl’s Nature’s Greens saving you the time spent stemming, washing and chopping greens. Their bagged mustard greens are sold here in Columbia, SC at Piggly Wiggly, Lowes, Walmart, and Bi-Lo, or use their product search tool to find Nature’s Greens near you.
To make this gyro skillet, first, brown ground lamb, red onion, garlic, and gyro spices. Next, pan-fry the diced potatoes in olive oil and when they’re browned and almost tender, add the cherry tomatoes and mustard greens. A bit of broth helps braise the greens and potatoes to make them tender – my trick to quickly cooking sturdier greens like mustards. While the Greek lamb gyro skillet is cooking, make an easy tzatziki with Greek yogurt and grated cucumber. After the vegetables have cooked, add the ground lamb back in and serve the skillet topped with dollops of tzatziki.
Greek Gyro Skillet Recipe Adaptions
If you don’t eat lamb, feel free to make this gyro skillet with ground beef, or make a meatless version using meatless crumbles or one of the new meat substitutes designed to taste like beef.
Another way to make this recipe is with rice instead of potatoes. Just sauté the vegetables first, then stir in cooked rice along with the lamb towards the end.
While Nature’s Greens mustard greens are my favorite addition to this Greek lamb gyro skillet recipe, if you’re not a fan of their peppery flavor, Nature’s Greens also sells chopped kale, which would work nicely in here as well!
Feel free to have fun with different sauces too! Instead of tzatziki, you could serve this with Greek yogurt spiked with harissa or tahini, dollops of hummus, or this garlic-scallion sauce.
If you like this Greek gyro skillet recipe, follow my Mediterranean recipes Pinterest board for more inspiration.
Greek Lamb Gyro Skillet Recipe
Serves: 4ish
Prep time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
1 ½ tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil, divided
½ red onion, peeled and chopped
1 lb ground lamb
4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
1 ½ lbs waxy potatoes, diced
1 pint cherry tomatoes
8 ounces Nature’s Greens mustard greens
½ cup chicken or vegetable broth
Crumbled feta cheese, for serving
Tzatziki:
½ large cucumber, grated
1 ½ cups plain Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely chopped dill
1 tablespoon finely chopped mint
Instructions:
First, make the tzatziki. Place the grated cucumber on a couple layers of paper towels and squeeze the liquids out. Mix the grated cucumber with yogurt, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill and mint, and season with salt to taste. Set aside until ready to use.
Next, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a large skillet on medium-high heat. Stir in onion and a pinch of salt and sauté until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add lamb, garlic, cumin, oregano, smoked paprika, and season with salt and black pepper. Cook, breaking apart with a spatula, until meat is cooked through and browned. Remove lamb to a plate and set aside until ready to use. Carefully wipe the skillet clean with a paper towel.
Add remaining 1 ½ tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet. Add potatoes, season with salt and black pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are browned and starting to get tender. Stir in tomatoes and mustard greens and pour in broth. Cook, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender and tomatoes are just starting to burst, adding more broth or water if needed to prevent burning.
Stir the cooked ground lamb back into the skillet and cook a minute or two to warm through. Serve topped with dollops of tzatziki.
If you like this Greek lamb gyro skillet recipe, you might also like:
Mustard Greens Greek Salad
Simple Vegetarian Lasagna with Mustard Greens
Mustard Greens and Sausage Orecchiette
