Türkiye
Turkish cooking spans a breakfast skillet of eggs and tomato, tiny hand-folded dumplings, olive-oil vegetables and street-food classics. Here are twenty iconic dishes, from the morning menemen to a tray of pistachio baklava.
Menemen
Turkey’s beloved breakfast — soft scrambled eggs cooked slowly into a base of tomato, green pepper and pul biber, often finished with crumbled white cheese.
Cacık
The Turkish yogurt-and-cucumber cooler — diced cucumber, garlic and dried mint whisked into yogurt, thinned with a little water and served cold beside grilled meats and bean stews.
Çoban Salatası
Turkey’s everyday summer salad — tomato, cucumber, pepper and onion diced small, dressed with nothing more than olive oil, lemon and the juice the tomatoes give up.
Sigara Böreği
The crisp little cheese rolls that anchor every Turkish meze table — white cheese and herbs wrapped tight in thin yufka pastry, fried golden, and eaten hot with tea.
Mercimek Çorbası
The soup you find on every Turkish table at any hour — red lentils cooked soft with onion, carrot and potato, blended smooth, and brightened with a lemon wedge and a spiced butter drizzle.
Kuru Fasulye
Turkey’s national comfort food — dried white beans stewed with onion, tomato and pepper paste, usually with beef or lamb, and ladled over rice as the beloved pairing ‘pilav üstü kuru.’
Mantı
Tiny hand-folded dumplings filled with spiced raw meat and onion, boiled and drowned in garlicky yogurt with a pul-biber-and-mint butter drizzle. From Kayseri.
Şehriyeli Pilav
The everyday Turkish rice that accompanies almost every meal — long-grain rice toasted with threads of vermicelli until nutty, then steamed grain-separate and fluffy.
İskender Kebap
A signature dish of Bursa — thin slices of döner-style meat over pieces of pide bread, blanketed in buttery tomato sauce and served with yogurt and a pour of browned butter.
Adana Kebap
The fiery hand-minced kebab of Adana in the southeast — fatty lamb worked with red pepper and pul biber, pressed onto wide flat skewers and grilled over coals, then wrapped in lavash with sumac onions.
İzgara Köfte
The grilled meatballs at the heart of Turkish home cooking — ground meat kneaded with grated onion and spices, rested, then shaped into flat ovals and charred over the grill.
İmam Bayıldı
A cornerstone of Turkish olive-oil cookery — whole eggplants stuffed with a sweet-savory onion, garlic and tomato mix, gently poached in olive oil and served cool.
Karnıyarık
The hot, meat-stuffed sibling of İmam Bayıldı — whole eggplants split down the middle and filled with spiced ground beef, onion and tomato, then baked in a light tomato sauce.
Hünkar Beğendi
An Ottoman palace dish — a slow-cooked lamb stew spooned over a silky purée of fire-roasted eggplant folded into a cheesy béchamel.
Lahmacun
The ultimate Turkish street food — a paper-thin round of dough spread with a finely worked topping of lamb, onion, tomato and parsley, baked hot, then doused with lemon and rolled up.
Kıymalı Pide
Turkey’s boat-shaped flatbread — a long oval of yeasted dough spread with spiced raw ground meat, onion, pepper and tomato, its edges folded and pinched, then baked hot and brushed with butter.
Simit
The sesame-crusted ring bread sold from every Turkish street cart — twisted ropes of dough dipped in grape molasses, rolled thick in sesame, and baked deep golden.
Fırın Sütlaç
Turkey’s baked rice pudding — a creamy milk-and-rice custard poured into little dishes and baked hot until the tops brown and blister.
Baklava
Turkey’s iconic dessert — dozens of gossamer layers of yufka brushed with real butter, packed with pistachios, baked crisp and soaked in lemon syrup.
Ayran
The frothy salted yogurt drink Turks reach for as often as water — yogurt whisked with cold water and a little salt, foamed on top, and drunk with kebabs and börek.
Middle Eastern home cooking, organized by country. Your family’s version is the one that counts.