Türk Mutfağı · The Turkish Table

Turkish Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Pull a chair up to the sofra, where lamb roasts slowly under a coat of butter, red lentil soup is finished with a spoonful of sizzling tereyağı, and baklava is layered with clarified butter the old way. Honest ingredients and deep flavor, the way Anatolia has always cooked.

Explore the Recipes
Butter✦ Olive Oil✦ Clarified Butter
An elegantly plated dish on a dark wooden table
✦ Kuzu Tandır
From the recipe collection
Tereyağı

Butter First

Turkish cooking begins with tereyağı, good butter from mountain pastures. It finishes the soups, enriches the pilafs, and carries the scent of pul biber across the sofra.

Zeytinyağı

Aegean Olive Oil

The zeytinyağlı dishes of the Aegean coast are braised gently in real olive oil, pressed from groves that have fed Anatolia for centuries.

Asla

Never Vegetable Oil

No seed oils, no shortcuts. Only the traditional fats that Turkish home kitchens and lokantas have trusted for generations.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Turkish Recipes

Six beloved dishes from the Turkish table, each cooked with the honest fats that bring out the best in every ingredient.

Anadolu Kuzu Tandir, slices of slow roasted lamb resting on a warm platter

Kuzu Tandır

Slow roasted lamb with butter

4 hr 15 min·6 servings·Medium

The great celebration lamb of Anatolia. A bone in shoulder rubbed with butter and warm spices, then roasted low and slow until the meat slips from the bone.

Ingredients

  • 2 kg bone in lamb shoulder
  • 4 tbsp soft butter
  • 2 tbsp rendered lamb tail fat, or more butter
  • 6 garlic cloves, halved
  • 1 tbsp dried Turkish oregano (kekik)
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 250 ml hot water

Instructions

  1. Heat the oven to 150°C (300°F). Pierce the lamb in several places and tuck the garlic halves deep into the meat.
  2. Mash the butter with the tail fat, kekik, cumin, salt, and pepper, and rub it over every surface of the lamb.
  3. Set the lamb in a deep roasting dish with the bay leaves, pour the hot water around it, and cover tightly with a lid or a double layer of foil.
  4. Roast 3 hours 30 minutes to 4 hours, basting with the pan juices once an hour, until the meat is falling from the bone.
  5. Uncover, raise the oven to 200°C (400°F), and roast 20 minutes more until the top is bronzed.
  6. Rest the lamb 15 minutes under loose foil so the juices settle.
  7. Serve over buttered rice pilaf, spooning the pan juices generously on top.
Boğaz Balik Bugulama, a fish fillet steamed with herbs and lemon

Balık Buğulama

Steamed sea bream with butter and olive oil

35 min·2 servings·Easy

A gentle fisherman's supper from the shores of the Bosphorus. Sea bream steamed over sweet onion and tomato in a broth of butter, olive oil, and lemon.

Ingredients

  • 2 whole sea bream, cleaned, or 4 fillets
  • 3 tbsp butter, divided
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 ripe tomatoes, sliced
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 bay leaves
  • Half a lemon, in thin slices
  • 150 ml hot water
  • Salt and white pepper
  • A handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped

Instructions

  1. Warm the olive oil with 2 tbsp of the butter in a wide lidded pan and soften the onion about 5 minutes.
  2. Lay the tomato slices over the onion and season with salt and white pepper.
  3. Nestle the fish on top, season again, and cover with the lemon slices and bay leaves.
  4. Pour in the hot water, dot with the remaining butter, cover, and steam gently 12 to 15 minutes until the flesh flakes easily.
  5. Pull the pan off the heat and let it rest, covered, 3 minutes.
  6. Shower with parsley and serve straight from the pan, spooning the buttery broth over each portion.
Zeytinyağlı Imam Bayildi, stuffed eggplant with vegetables in olive oil

İmam Bayıldı

Eggplant braised in olive oil

1 hr 15 min·4 servings·Medium

The most famous of the zeytinyağlı dishes. Whole eggplants filled with sweet onions, tomato, and garlic, braised slowly in generous olive oil and served at room temperature.

Ingredients

  • 4 small eggplants
  • 150 ml olive oil, divided
  • 3 onions, thinly sliced
  • 4 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 3 ripe tomatoes, 2 chopped and 1 sliced
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1½ tsp salt, plus more for the eggplants
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • A small bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped
  • 150 ml hot water and the juice of half a lemon

Instructions

  1. Peel the eggplants in alternating bands, salt them lightly, and let them sit 20 minutes before patting dry.
  2. Brown the whole eggplants on all sides in half the olive oil, then lay them in a baking dish.
  3. Soften the onions and garlic in the remaining oil over low heat, about 10 minutes.
  4. Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar, salt, and pepper, cook 5 minutes more, and fold in most of the parsley.
  5. Slit each eggplant lengthwise, open a pocket, and pack it with the onion filling, topping each with a tomato slice.
  6. Pour the hot water and lemon juice around the eggplants, cover, and bake at 160°C (325°F) for 40 minutes.
  7. Cool to room temperature, scatter the rest of the parsley, and serve with good bread.
Sofra Mercimek Corbasi, a bowl of red lentil soup finished with butter

Mercimek Çorbası

Red lentil soup with sizzling butter

40 min·4 servings·Easy

The everyday soup of the whole country. Red lentils simmered soft with onion and carrot, blended silky, and crowned with butter that has been allowed to sizzle with pul biber.

Ingredients

  • 200 g red lentils, rinsed
  • 60 g butter, divided
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 carrot, chopped
  • 1 tbsp plain flour
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste, or Turkish pepper paste
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1.2 litres hot water or light stock
  • Salt and black pepper
  • 1 tsp pul biber and lemon wedges, to serve

Instructions

  1. Melt half the butter in a soup pot and soften the onion and carrot about 6 minutes.
  2. Stir in the flour and tomato paste for 1 minute, then add the cumin.
  3. Add the lentils and hot water, bring to a simmer, and cook 25 minutes until the lentils have collapsed.
  4. Blend the soup until completely smooth, season with salt and pepper, and loosen with hot water if needed.
  5. In a small pan, let the remaining butter foam with the pul biber until fragrant.
  6. Ladle the soup into bowls, pour the sizzling butter over the top, and serve with lemon wedges.
Fırın Pide, golden Turkish flatbreads fresh from the bakery oven

Pide

Turkish flatbread brushed with butter

2 hr 30 min·4 flatbreads·Medium

The soft dimpled flatbread of the Turkish bakery. A slow yeasted dough marked by hand, glazed with yolk, and brushed with melted butter the moment it leaves the oven.

Ingredients

  • 500 g bread flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1½ tsp salt
  • 300 ml warm water
  • 100 ml warm whole milk
  • 40 g soft butter, plus 50 g melted for brushing
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tbsp thick yogurt, for the glaze
  • Nigella and sesame seeds, to finish

Instructions

  1. Whisk the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt, then add the water, milk, and soft butter and knead 8 minutes to a soft, slightly sticky dough.
  2. Cover and let it rise about 1 hour 30 minutes until doubled.
  3. Divide into 4 pieces, rest 15 minutes, then press each into a round on floured trays.
  4. Dimple a deep diamond pattern into each round with your fingertips, brush with the yolk beaten with yogurt, and scatter with nigella and sesame.
  5. Bake at 230°C (450°F) for 12 to 14 minutes until deeply golden.
  6. Brush generously with the melted butter and serve warm, wrapped in a clean cloth.
Şerbetli Baklava, a tray of layered pistachio pastry cut into diamonds

Baklava

Layered pastry with clarified butter

2 hr plus resting·24 pieces·Medium

The crown of the Turkish pastry tray. Paper thin sheets layered with pistachios and real clarified butter, baked deep gold, and soaked with a lemon scented syrup.

Ingredients

  • 30 sheets filo pastry, about 450 g
  • 250 g clarified butter, melted
  • 300 g pistachios, finely ground
  • 400 g sugar
  • 300 ml water
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 strip of lemon peel
  • A pinch of salt
  • 2 tbsp ground pistachio, to finish

Instructions

  1. Make the syrup first: dissolve the sugar in the water with the lemon peel, simmer 10 minutes, stir in the lemon juice, and cool completely.
  2. Brush a 30 by 40 cm tray with clarified butter and layer in 12 filo sheets, brushing each one with butter as you go.
  3. Scatter half the ground pistachios, add 6 more buttered sheets, scatter the rest of the nuts, and finish with the remaining 12 sheets, buttering each.
  4. Cut the tray into diamonds with a sharp knife, going all the way to the base, and pour any remaining butter over the top.
  5. Bake at 170°C (340°F) for 45 to 50 minutes until deep gold and crisp.
  6. Pour the cooled syrup evenly over the hot baklava and listen for the crackle.
  7. Rest at least 4 hours, then finish each diamond with a pinch of ground pistachio.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Elojar Mutfak

Elojar Mutfak is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Turkey, from the lokantas of Istanbul to the village sofras of Anatolia, where a meal begins with soup, stretches through shared plates, and always ends with something soaked in syrup and a glass of tea. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked in family kitchens, patiently, precisely, and always with a generous hand on the butter.

Our only house rule is an old one: tereyağı from mountain dairies, olive oil pressed on the Aegean coast, clarified butter melted gently for the pastry tray, and nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat on the tables we learned from.

Afiyet olsun, may it do you good.