Turkish cuisine is undoubtedly one of the greatest advantages when traveling to Turkey. Delicious, aromatic, based on local products, still slightly exotic for the European taste. Turkish cuisine is a perfect mix of meat dishes, fresh vegetables, vegetarian dishes and wonderful desserts. Let’s not forget about the rich flavor of the food, all thanks to the spices that Turkish cuisine is known of.

 

Dishes

The dish that probably is most famous for a lot of us is kebab. However, there are several types of kebab in Turkey and they usually look different than those we are used to. Doner kebab in Turkey is served on a plate – it is a dish consisting of meat baked on a rotating skewer (usually beef or lamb) cut, with fresh vegetables – salads and sauce. Another type of kebab is Adana kebab. It is lamb (or beef) meat, ground or very finely chopped, baked on fire on a special sword. Most often, it is also quite spicy. Adana kebab is served with additions – rice or bulgur and vegetables. Of course, in Turkey you can also eat kebab in a roll. It is most often served in a roll pita.

 

Appetizers

Türkiye is a country of wonderful appetizers. The meal usually starts with bringing several types of appetizers and pita bread to the table. The most common are: patlican salatasi, i.e. eggplant salad, acili ezme, i.e. a spicy, thick sauce made of hot chili peppers (it goes great with grilled meats), yaprak salma – an appetizer or a dish in itself. Yaprak salma are tiny cabbage rolls made of grape leaves with aromatically prepared rice. Also worth recommending are manti – small dumplings with lamb or beef meat, usually served in tomato sauce and yogurt. Zeytin ezmesi, an intensely flavored black olive paste, also often appears on the table as an appetizer. Among the appetizers, we always include yogurt with cucumber and garlic, i.e. cacik. Olive oil and olives are also very important products in Turkish cuisine and often appear on the table. We highly recommend it, because olive oil and olives in Turkey are very tasty and of good quality. Türkiye is the fourth largest olive producer in the world.

When talking about Turkish cuisine, one cannot fail to mention lahmacun. Lahmacun can easily be called the king of street food in Turkey. This is what is often called the Turkish version of pizza because of the way it looks. Lahmacun is a very thin pastry filled with meat (lamb, mutton or beef). The meat filling is delicious and aromatic – the meat is fried with tomato sauce, garlic, onion, spices and greens. Delicious! And it tastes best straight from the oven.

 

Desserts

After these classics of Turkish cuisine, let’s move on to desserts. I guess everyone associates Türkiye with sweets and tea. The most famous dessert is baklava, i.e. very thin layers of filo dough, layered with pistachios and/or walnuts, covered with sugar syrup. A very moist, sticky and sweet wonder, so it is served as small pieces for dessert. Kadayif is thin threads of dough layered with pistachios or nuts in sweet sugar syrup. Kunefe is very interesting – it is a cake made of thin threads, stuffed with cheese that is wonderfully chewy after baking, and sprinkled with pistachios. Finally (although this is not the end of Turkish desserts), let’s mention lokma. Lokma are tiny donuts without filling, but soaked in sweet syrup, often with a little lemon juice. They can also be sprinkled with pistachios or nuts. Desserts can be ordered in a restaurant after a meal, but you can easily find them while walking around the city in places where you can buy them to go. It doesn’t matter where, but you have to make sure you try them.

Tea

Finishing this short entry about Turkish cuisine, we must end this text, just like every meal in Turkey, with tea. Turkish tea is a strong, aromatic infusion that is drunk from characteristic tulip-shaped glasses. Tea is an important element of Turkish culture and a customary end to a meal, so in most places, tea will be served at the end. There are also places where tea is served free of charge. We highly recommend drinking tulip tea at the end of a meal – regardless of whether it is summer or winter. That’s always a good idea. For coffee lovers, let’s also mention Turkish coffee. It’s a kind of Eastern espresso – strong essence, thick consistency, usually very sweet, served in small cups.

 

Getting to know new countries and new places is definitely more complete if we add the sense of taste to it. That’s why we recommend you try new, unknown flavors while traveling. You can always discover something good, something you will like, sometimes delight you. And Turkish cuisine is truly a guarantee of culinary ecstasy 🙂