“Truly revolting” video exposes how doner meat is really made

While they’re often the go-to meal for clubbers who’ve stayed out way past their bedtimes, doner kebabs are also a popular meal during normal working hours too.

But have you ever wondered what goes into making doner meat?

Well, a YouTube video running through the process has done just that and it's made varying reactions.

It comes courtesy of Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped, with presenter Jimmy Doherty feasting on some doner before getting into the grisly details behind how it’s made.

fermate via Getty Images

In case you need a reminder: the traditional Turkish grub is found skewered on a vertical rotisserie, spinning slowly, and when an order’s put in the meat is shaved with a sharp knife.

The resultant strips of blended meat are then placed over a flatbread or in a wrap, coated in various sauces and some salad.

"Now look at this doner kebab,” says Jimmy in the video, which was uploaded on YouTube a year or so ago: “I want to find out what meat is in it because you can't really tell - it's just shavings. Quite bready. I don't know.'

He has a brief chat with a kebab shop owner who says theirs is made with lamb, but he wasn’t confident in saying what other kebab shops might use. Doner can include chicken, beef, and/or lamb, and in some cases it might contain veal.

Jimmy then heads over to Veli’s Kebabs factory in Staffordshire whilst bracing himself for the truth that’s waiting for him.

“This has come off one of the big supermarkets,” says a factory worker while they look at the offcuts that will become a doner slab. “They trim the meat up, they get it aesthetically pleasing for the customer, and the trim that gets leftover we get coming in.

“If [the meat] is labelled up as doner, which everybody associates with what's on a spit, it should be 100% lamb. There are companies out there that are labeling up kebabs and they're containing beef and chicken - and there have been some instances of pork, which, for the Muslim community, is a big no-no.”

So, how does it get made?

Large lamb offcuts are pushed through a machine that dices it up, and then those pieces are passed into another machine that begins blending them with other ingredients.

Textured soya protein bulks out the mix, and onion powder and salt are added for flavour. The salt also helps to bind the blended meat and soya protein together, enabling the famous strips.

At this point, the doner meat is 85% lamb, 5% bulking agents, 5% rusks, and 5% seasoning. Thick discs of it are then stacked up onto a skewer, with a sheet of lamb skin between each one.

Doner kebab rotisseries via necati bahadir bermek via Getty Images

“I never knew that,” said one comment under the video, adding: “Never having doner.”

Other’s branded it “disgusting” whilst swearing they would “never eat [it] again”.

Someone else wrote: "Beef, chicken and lamb. My three favourites in one dish."

Another person pointed out: "I don't care what it is made of - as long as all the ingredients are honestly listed so I can make an informed choice."