We decided to tackle one of Canada’s most beloved, late night, drunken foods — the donair.

If you’re Canadian, you definitely know what a donair is. If you aren’t Canadian (or if you are but somehow don’t know what a donair is), then here is a quick history lesson! This magical food is an old school dish from Turkey where it goes by the name of doner kebab. It’s traditionally made with spiced minced lamb that is cooked, shaved thinly, and then placed into a pita or other flatbread along with veggies and some sort of sauce — similar to a gyro or shawarma, but so much better in every way.

In the early 1970s a Halifax man named Peter Gamoulakos created a version of the doner kebab which became what we know today as a donair. He swapped the minced lamb for ground beef (lamb is expensive, yo) and developed a sweet-garlic sauce that would soon be the base for millions of drunken messes.

Now that the history lesson is over, let’s get to making a homemade donair! The most intensive part of this recipe is making the donair meat, which actually doesn’t take that much work. There are many different spice blends that people use to make donair meat — we chose to go with a supposedly authentic blend. If you think that we’re wrong, feel free to let us know by commenting below.

Donair Meat Recipe

1 pound of lean ground beef

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dried oregano

½ tsp black pepper

½ tsp italian seasoning*

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

*This reddit comment suggests swapping out the Italian seasoning for za’atar spice — this apparently makes the donair meat that much better.

Making the donair meat is super simple. All you have to do is to combine all the above ingredients in a bowl and mix them all together. You don’t want the meat to have the texture of ground beef — after you’re done combining the ingredients, it should almost be a meat paste. The best way to accomplish this is to knead the sh*t out of it. Go hard. Squeeze it, slam it against the counter, rip it apart, and repeat.

Once you feel like the meat has been adequately kneaded, and the spices have been incorporated, grab it and shape it into a giant ball of meat. Then take it and slam it hard against the counter, or toss it back and forth between your hands forcefully. Flatten the ball, fold it in half, reshape it, and do it again. This will make everything smooth and homogeneous. This recipe is great for when you want to let a little anger out!

tl;dr: smack that meat.