Turkish Learning Community and Resource

This is the first of a series of blog posts in which we will travel through the rich, varied and delicious foods of Türkiye!

Çiğ köfte 

You can find çiğ köfte almost everywhere as street food in Turkiye. It is a local dish of Southeastern Anatolia, formerly known as Edessa, now known as Şanlıurfa. It is also a common dish in the traditional cuisine of the Jewish people in the Şanlıurfa region. It is traditionally made with raw meat. For this reason, name stayed as çiğ köfte (raw meat). It is cooked by kneading raw meat with tomato paste, onion and spices. Nowadays, the vegetarian version has become more common by replacing raw meat with bulgur. It leaves a tremendous flavor in your mouth with various spices. Optionally, it is wrapped in lettuce or lavash and eaten with pleasure. 

Lahmacun 

Lahmacun is one of my favorite dishes, especially with ayran yummy! Lahmacun is a dish from Middle Eastern cuisine made by spreading a mixture of minced meat, parsley, onion, onion, garlic, black pepper and spices such as isot (red pepper) on the rolled out dough and baking it in a stone oven. Since the dough is rolled out very thin, the edges are crispy and the fat of the meat is combined with the spices, so that the center became soft and tender. 

Kokoreç 

Now it's time for the most popular street food, kokoreç! It is a street food that you can find late in the evening when you get hungry on your way back from a bar or a party. Kokoreç is made from the small intestine of sheep from the Anatolian region, wrapped around a skewer and slowly roasted over a fire. It is usually sliced thinly or thickly between bread and spices are added to its flavor. When people learn that it is usually made from small intestines, they may be prejudiced and not want to try it. But as soon as you take a bite, it becomes a tremendous flavor that you cannot give up.