Michel

Guys, Thank you for your interest and you advice. I have printed your post and I will try them out in the next 4-5 days. I will keep you posted. v.gautam, very interesting suggestion. I will leave it last to try. Look for my results in 5 days, so I can share the experiense with you all. Thank you again. Michel

Hello all, I am new to egullet. A little about me. I am from Cyprus and I have Lebanese Take Away shops with Chicken and Beef Shawarma, Falafel, Liver and many other staff. The business was left to me by my father who ran these shops for more than 2 decades. Now it is time to take control of this and I need to change some things, upgrade some others and add others. Small introduction before I tell you my problems. The chicken shawarma has chicken breast sliced in thin layers with most of the shin (90%) taken off. We leave it for at least 8 hours in our special chicken sauce and then we prepare the shawarma. On top we place a very thin layer of chicken skin. For the beef shawarma we take big pieces of beef fillet and again we slice it into thin layers. We also leave it in our beef sauce for 8 hours and then prepare the shawarma. On top of the shawarma we put a thick layer of fat to have some juice going into the shawarma. This is the only fat within the beef shawarma and it is gone very fast. My first problem. During the busy hours (Lunch and Dinner time) my food is very good but between those hours, as well as before, when the shop is not busy, my shawarmas dry out a lot. I have tried leaving a small fire on just to keep it warn but if the meat does not burn, it will dry out for sure. Especially the beef, it also gets very hard. Because of this, the quality of the food is falling and I am desperately to find a solution to this. QUESTION1. How can I keep my shawarmas juicy even if I do not cut any meat of them for 4-5 hours? My second problem. Some times the chicken meat on the shawarma it is so soft after working with it for some time that you can eat it off the shawarma with a spoon. Seriously, when I try to cut it, it is melting. This results to a lot of meat going to waste because when this happens I throw the whole shawarma away. Question2 This happens because the chicken is left in the sauce to long or IS it because the chicken is sliced into very thin layers or is it because the chicken meat we receive some times is from small chickens or can all of the above cause the problem I am facing? I will appreciate any help and advice. Please, let me hear what you think. Thank you.