Xanthopoulos ★ 4.0
Xanthopoulos has served pork chops, lamb skewers, and kokoretsi from a charcoal grill since the 1960s for prices that have barely moved in real terms.
History
Kokoretsi is the Easter ritual spit of the Greek countryside, present in some form in every Balkan food culture under different names. The Thessaloniki version uses lamb and pork offal mixed, rather than lamb-only. The city eats it year-round at dedicated grill restaurants rather than only at Easter.
Make it at home
Ingredients
- 1kg mixed lamb offal (heart, liver, sweetbreads, kidney)
- 300g lamb caul fat
- 1kg cleaned lamb intestines (from a butcher who handles offal)
- Juice of 4 lemons (for cleaning)
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 100ml olive oil
- Juice of 2 lemons (for marinade)
- 4 garlic cloves, finely grated
- 2 tbsp dried Greek oregano
- 1 tbsp coarse sea salt
- 1 tbsp freshly cracked black pepper
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- Country bread and lemon-dressed cabbage salad, to serve
Method
- Soak the intestines in cold water with the 4 lemons' juice and the vinegar for 1 hour. Rinse repeatedly inside and out until they smell only of lemon.
- Trim the offal: remove gristle from the heart, peel any membrane from the liver, blanch the sweetbreads in salted water for 4 minutes and trim.
- Cut all offal into 3cm pieces. Whisk olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and cumin and toss with the offal. Marinate 1 hour.
- Thread the marinated offal onto a long spit, alternating types so each portion has a slice of each.
- Wrap the caul fat around the threaded offal in a single sheet to bind it.
- Take one intestine and tie one end to the spit. Wrap it tightly in a spiral around the offal, overlapping each turn, all the way down to the other end. Tie off.
- Heat a charcoal rotisserie to medium-low. Start the spit 60cm from the coals and rotate continuously.
- After 90 minutes, move the spit to 30cm from the coals and continue rotating for 60 minutes more, until the exterior is dark and crisp and the interior is at 75C.
- Rest 10 minutes. Slice into 3cm rounds with a sharp knife. Serve with country bread, lemon, and a sharp cabbage salad.
Tip from the editors. Buy intestines from a Greek, Turkish or Balkan butcher who sells them already cleaned. Without a rotisserie, you can bake at 160C for 3 hours, then 220C for 20 minutes; the texture will be close, not perfect.
Where to eat kokoretsi
Kokoretsi in Thessaloniki
Diagonios 1977 ★ 4.3
Diagonios keeps the Egnatia corner open until 3am on Friday and Saturday with the same pork souvlaki it has served since 1977. At Egnatia 159.
More cities are in research. Want kokoretsi covered somewhere specific? Tell us where you want to eat.