Homemade Halifax Donairs

I have posted about Halifax donairs before.
From what I've been able to gather over the past ten years, the Halifax donair is a strange Lebanese sub-genre of middle-eastern flatbread with sliced meat, descended from gyros. The meat tends to be a little spicier, the pita is a lot greasier, and a sweet milky sauce is used instead of a tangy tzatziki sauce.
My husband pines for donairs more than he pines for the fresh seafood from back home, so when we came across some fresh ground lamb at the St. Norbert Farmer's Market last weekend the wheels started turning. (Not that Halifax donair shops actually still use lamb. But it was our inspiration, nonetheless.)


We mixed the lamb equally with ground (grass fed) beef, also purchased at the market. The recipe I found on the internet gave specific instructions on mixing the spices with the meat:

Place the ground beef in a large bowl, and use your hands to blend in the spice mixture. If you want the smooth texture of meat that you see in a real donair shop, you must do this in a steel mixing bowl and on a sturdy surface. Pick up the meat, and throw it down with force about 20 times, kneading it after each throw.

Jeff took these instructions a step further and increased the meat force by throwing the meat up in the air and then slamming it down into the bowl. A very impressive performance.

The meat was truly exciting to mix, but the sauce really is the magic part of the meal - it's really what sets apart the Halifax donair apart from the rest of the crowd. And here's how to make it, again courtesy of Dash's Donair recipe. Add some sugar and garlic powder to a can of evaporated milk. Slowly mix in vinegar, a table spoon at a time. The vinegar will curdle the milk and thicken the sauce. Sweet goopy goodness.

Now fry your pita until it's soft, pile on the sliced meat, tomatoes and onions, and load on the sauce... and you've got yourself a reasonable facsimile of a Halifax donair.