Turkish cuisine
Turkish cuisine is up there with French and Chinese food as one of the world’s greats, with a long and rich history to match. Its roots lie in the nomadic cooking traditions of the Turkic peoples, enriched over the years by Arabic, Indian and Persian, as well as Mediterranean influences.
This section is designed to give you a brief overview of the main elements of Turkish cuisine.
Bread - Ekmek
No Turkish meal is complete without bread, which is often still baked in a traditional stone oven.
Pide
A thick, flat, soft bread made of leavened dough, sold in special establishments known as pide lokantasi, often baked with a topping of cheese, minced meat or other ingredients.
Kebap
Anglicised as “kebab” – describes a grilled meat dish made from minced meat or meat cut into fine cubes or slices. The most widely known variant is undoubtedly the doner kebab, or more correctly döner kebap, which is traditionally served with rice and salad. The type of kebab commonly found in northern Europe is only served in the tourist areas of Turkey.
Other popular versions of the kebab include adana kebap (spicy minced meat cooked on a skewer) and iskender kebap (served with a yoghurt and tomato sauce and deep-fried croutons).
Soups
Turkish cuisine is characterised by its wide variety of soups, including yayla corbasi (rice soup with fresh yoghurt and mint), tomato soup, red and green lentil soup, and many others.
Salads
Salads are often served as a starter, usually dressed with a marinade of lemon juice and olive oil.
Meze – starters
Meze, which are served after the soup and before the main course, are either cold or sautéed in olive oil. They may be served with a yoghurt sauce or consist of hot, stuffed puff pastry pockets, sautéed seafood or other items. Starters are always served with bread or pide.
Fish and seafood
This is an important part of Turkish cuisine. Most Turkish families dine various times a week on fish, whether grilled, fried or cooked with vegetables. Seafood is appreciated both as a starter and as a main dish.
Meat
Large slices of meat, such as steaks, do not normally figure at all in Turkish cooking – although good restaurants nowadays do tend to have them on the menu. Meat is more often than not served as kebabs (see above), and is also popular in the form of lamb cutlets or roast lamb.
Desserts
Sweet delicacies in this department include baklava (slices of walnut-filled puff pastry dripping with honey), rice puddings and fruit salads.
Turkish coffee
Turkish coffee is made in a copper pot specially designed for the purpose (known as an ibrik or cezve). The finely-ground coffee is boiled up in water containing sugar. Sugar is therefore not added when the coffee is served. You order coffee in one of four ways: az sekerli (with little sugar), orta sekerli (medium-sweet), cok sekerli (sweet to very sweet) or sade (without sugar).
Raki
With food, with mezes, or just when you feel like it – but always diluted with cold water – raki is the national drink of Turkey. The milky white colour is caused by it emulsifying with the water, and by the precipitation of the aniseed that it contains.