How to stack and cook a donair on a vertical spit

[radical gardens]

hey ladys and gents this is my first post, i apologize if this is covered somewhere I did a brief search and did not find it so here goes.recently me and my wife acquired a kronos vertical rotisserie from a restaurant auction and are trying to make donairs we have done shawarma and it did really well but after many hours of searching we cant seem to find the method for stacking and cooking the donair cone. the last one we did we triple ground/ food processed the meat and then kneaded and threw it onto the counter as we read in some tips online, then refrigerated it over night for service in the morning however when we cooked it the meat started to slump down  and jam up the machine or it would cook part of it and then that cooked skin would basicly slide down making things very difficult. i would appreciate any help or suggestions in this secret to the donair
the meat we use is local fresh pasture raised lean ground beef 
 

[MSRadell]

The couple of times that I've had a Donair in Halifax they weren't cooked as a cone if I remember correctly. Since they are made from ground meat I think it would be very difficult to get them to hold their shape while cooking on a vertical rotisserie.

[Chris Hennes]

Are you using 100% ground meat, or are you layering ground patties in with thin slices of whole muscle? I'm thinking of a video @Hassouni posted here:

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

The donor in the above video looks like the one our local Turkish restaurant does every Sunday on their vertical rotisserie. It is not just ground meat.

[radical gardens]

 we are trying to make a Halifax style donair so we are using only ground beef I have not tried making individual patties I made a huge tube basically and then wrapped cling wrap around it to kinda compress and hold it in place. This time I have it sitting in my walk-in or rather standing on end with a rope holding it vertical 

8 hours ago, MSRadell said:

The couple of times that I've had a Donair in Halifax they weren't cooked as a cone if I remember correctly. Since they are made from ground meat I think it would be very difficult to get them to hold their shape while cooking on a vertical rotisserie.

  How where the ones that you had cooked in a oven and then cooled and transfered onto the rotisserie?

[radical gardens]

So it didn't turn out to well today maybe the trick is to cook it in cone shape somehow and then cool it and put it on the spit 

today it cracked in half and fell off had to put it into the oven anyway 

 

tastes delicious tho 

[rotuts]

CH

 

thanks for the Ref to the Bikers

 

I have a lot of there shows and remember this one

 

that being said, I missed that that had such a dull knife for the trimmings !

 

Tasty I bet it was

[gfweb]

Salt the meat and form it and refrigerate it overnight?  Salting makes meat a bit sticky.

 

I doubt that they use transglutaminase but that would work, I bet

[Chris Hennes]

1 hour ago, gfweb said:

I doubt that they use transglutaminase but that would work, I bet

Exactly what I was thinking: you need something to add structure, either by strengthening the myosin of bypassing it entirely. 

 

@radical gardens -- Can you post your recipe? Also, can you tell us anymore about the roaster you've got? It looks like an awesome piece of kit.

[MSRadell]

5 hours ago, radical gardens said:

 we are trying to make a Halifax style donair so we are using only ground beef I have not tried making individual patties I made a huge tube basically and then wrapped cling wrap around it to kinda compress and hold it in place. This time I have it sitting in my walk-in or rather standing on end with a rope holding it vertical 

  How where the ones that you had cooked in a oven and then cooled and transfered onto the rotisserie?

Actually, from what I can recall, the ones I had were never put on a spit. They were baked in a pan and then after they cooled they were sliced and cooked on a flat top before serving. Not sure if it's the true way of doing them or not but they were certainly delicious!

[Chris Hennes]

According to this Globe and Mail article, spit-roasting is the standard, but it's then finished on the griddle.