et with this article you can get a gist of a whole big world of Turkish tastes. Following you will read about some of the most common and most favorite Turkish dishes people cook and eat both at home and in restaurants.
Vegetable or Zeytin Yağlı Dishes
Turks have a big diversity of vegetables and of course this reflects on the dishes. One very important detail about vegetable dishes is whether they have meat in them or not. If a dish is cooked without any kind of meat then it is called zeytin yağlı — meaning cooked with olive oil. These kind of vegetable dishes are mostly served cold. Here are three good examples of zeytin yağlı dishes:
Yaprak Sarma — Wrapped vine leaves with a filling of rice, onion and spices like mint, currant, pepper and cinnamon.
Dolma — Vegetables either fresh or dried eggplants, peppers, tomatoes or zucchinis are stuffed with a mixture of rice and onion with various spices.
Taze Fasulye — Green beans cooked with tomato and/or tomato paste and of course onion.
Since Turks love meat very much, almost all the zeytin yağlı dishes are cooked with meat, too. But that’s not it. There are many other delicious meat dishes to discover.
Turkish Dishes with Meat
Karnıyarık — Fried eggplants with a minced meat, onion, parsley, garlic and tomato filling. This dish is a must. To make sure that what you get is a good one, check the eggplants. The dark color of the peel should not smudge on the peeled parts and the meat should not look too dark or dry.
Lahmacun — A pizza like dish with a topping of finely minced meat and onions with spices on flaky thin dough. It is served with tomatoes, lettuce, parsley or rocket and most people prefer to squeeze lemon on it and roll to eat easier like tacos. It originates from the early Syrian cuisine of the Levant and the name comes from Arabic “dough with meat”. It has been a popular fast food like dish in Turkey.
Kurufasulye — Beans, Turks just love it. It can be cooked with or without meat or even with dried spiced thin slices of beef called pastırma. Served with sade pilav (plain rice) and turşu (pickles and sauerkraut). The restaurants across Süleymaniye Mosque are the masters of this dish.