Discovering The Amazing Turkish Culinary Culture

Turkey has a very rich culture involving religion, family, history, and food. They are joyful people and like to celebrate everything. And how can you celebrate better than with a big meal?

So, there are many things we can say about Turkish food. The most important is the taste; trust me when I say it tastes good. There is something for all tastes: spicy, sweet, salty, colorful, and all sorts of interesting mixtures.

There is a lot of meat involved in Turkish cuisine, and each time they hear I am a vegetarian, they look surprised and say that Turkey is not for vegetarians. But that is not true, because I found a lot of dishes without meat that I love.

Turkish cuisine has most of its heritage from Ottoman cuisine. And I can say Turks love food.

There is a lot of bread, meat, and sugar (in everything), and there is always salad on the table (at least as an appetizer), tea (black tea), Ayran (Turkish yogurt drink), and Turkish coffee.

This is breakfast… or a part of it, because we couldn’t make everything fit on the same table.

And the rest of the ‘breakfast’ here:

And there is always dessert on the table because Turkey loves sugar (everything is about Seker, even the tea they love so much, which they drink maybe more than 20 cups a day, and most of them put two cubs of sugar in it!!).

Here are more photos of my Turkish breakfasts.

Let’s not forget traditional Turkish drinks: Ayran and Turkish tea (Turkish: çay, pronounced Chai, black tea).

guzleme ayran — Ayran must be accompanied by some food, and this is with Gözleme – traditional Turkish flatbread, made of hand-rolled dough that is lightly brushed with butter and eggs, filled with various toppings, sealed, and cooked over a griddle.

Because their families are very close to each other, most of them have dinner together. So, there is always a big dinner for the Turkish families.

They wait for all the family members to get home so they can eat together. There is an unwritten rule: the oldest should sit first at the table. And if you want to please the host, you should eat all the food from your plate.

Let me introduce DINNERS:

Because Miriam, my colleague from Spain, and I are vegetarians, most of the foods we tried and photographed are without meat. So, for all of you who said we have nothing to eat in Turkey, I have tons of pictures to prove you are wrong.

Bread dishes – For breakfast, lunch, dinner, lentil soup, or kebap. Turkey cannot live without bread. Ever!

breakfast1 — For breakfast, burek with cheese or meat. Or raw vegetables with bread. And Tea!

breaddinner — Pide with cheese and salad. This was my first Ramadan dinner.

Speaking about Sahur, you can read more here, where I’ve explained some of the Turkish traditions during Ramadan. These are other Sahur breakfasts I’ve eaten:

1. Fast food

sahur2 — bread with potatoes, fries, and salad

2. Another common and traditional dish is lentil soup (Ezogelin soup or Turkish: Ezogelin çorbası, “the soup of Ezo the bride”).

The ingredients are red lentils, rice, bulgur, olive oil, butter, onion, garlic, tomato, tomato paste, paprika, hot pepper, dried mint, black pepper, and salt; it is usually served with lemon wedges.

And some more bread to go with everything else:

simit — Simit (bagel) can be found everywhere on the street or in the coffee shops

Çiğ köfte —I really love this one. It means ‘raw meatball’. A favorite way of eating çiğ köfte is rolled in a lettuce leaf, and I drink Ayran to counteract the burning sensation that this very spicy food gives.

dinner1 — çiğ köfte is the one with the lettuce leaves all around. This was homemade, all vegan, especially for us 😀

There are also two no-meat versions for vegetarians. Although traditional recipe requires minced -raw- meat, the version in Turkey consumed as fast-food (through small shops in every neighborhood of Turkey) must be meatless by law due to hygienic necessities. Therefore, çiğ köfte is vegan in Turkey for a decade. Meat is replaced by ground walnuts.

Another favorite of mine is the traditional Sarma, which is a dish of grape or cabbage leaves rolled around a filling usually based on minced meat. In Turkey, the word “sarma” is used interchangeably with dolma for stuffed vine leaves (yaprak sarma), cabbage (lahana sarma).

The filling usually contains minced meat, rice or bulgur, herbs, onion, currants, and pine nuts, herbs such as parsley and dill, and spices including cinnamon and black pepper. Lucky us, there are a lot of people and places that make the vegetarian version of this amazing dish.