The Turkish Kebab has it’s origins in Istanbul kebab house or Adana, an ancient Greek city (even cited as Adana in Homer’s Iliad). Adana is located in the eastern Mediterranean (just inland from the coast that sits across from Cyprus) and it’s Turkey’s 4th largest city. The Adana Kebab (as known in Turkey) is extremely popular and can be found on menus throughout Turkey and restaurants around the world. The Adana Kebab is made of ground lamb with about 20% of the mixture consisting of tail fat from a lamb. The lamb meat is seasoned with finely shopped onions, spices, red pepper paste (Biber Salcasi) and minced by hand with the use if a Mezzaluna. A handful of meat is then affixed on the long flat skewers and then squeezed along the metal skewer to form a long, slender kebab.
The Kebab (unlike usual grilling) is suspended over the charcoal pit – no direct contact with the grill surface and with gravity coming into play, the fear of your Kebabs falling off your skewers becomes very real. There are a few tips one must follow if you want to successfully grill Kebabs:
- You need the flat metal skewers that will better hold onto the ground meat mixture
- The ground meat mixture needs approx 20% fat in it so that your mixture will adhere to the skewers and not fall off
- Your meat mixture must not be overly wet or, again your meat will fall off the skewers. Finely chopped onions rather than grated grated onion work best
- The use of a food processor is recommended to knead and blend the Kebab mixture before shaping on to the skewers
- adding some baking soda into the meat mixture will help bind and lighten the density of the minced mixture
- There are two paths one can take when deciding what meat mixture to use. The Thanassi’s Kebab version utilizes ground beef (or veal) with some ground pork in the mix acting as the fat component. One could also use ground lamb with pork or go all-out pork. I like the ground beef plus pork mixture (closer to Thanassi’s).
- The Turkish Kebab mixture is a little trickier to emulate as it’s difficult to find the lamb’s tail fat used in the ground lamb mixture. Your best bet is to use ground lamb shoulder in the mix or a combo of ground lamb shoulder and ground chuck beef (also containing some fat). Turkey is a predominantly Muslim nation and I ground pork wouldn’t be included in the mix.
To accompany the Kebab, some good pita bread is lightly grilled and then cut into pieces and placed on your serving platter. The Greeks will also serve a garnish of sliced red onions and the Turks often serve a salad of sliced onions and parsley tossed in sumac and salt. In both the Greek and Turkish versions, roasted tomatoes are served (plus mildly hot green peppers in Turkey). You’ll need ripe tomatoes and one can either skewer the tomatoes whole on a separate skewer or thick tomato segments and peppers at the end of your Kebab skewer.
Finally, in both the Greek & Turkish Kebab, the skewers are suspended over the charcoal pit. These pits were designed for grilling kebabs and the skewers rest over the glowing embers. You and I do not have such equipment but you can place some bricks on both ends of your gas or charcoal grill and allow the skewers to rest on them. Make a batch of rice pilaf, serve up some homemade pita bread and serve the Kebabs with the roast tomato and green pepper kebabs, the onion salad with sumac and place some beers in the fridge to get chillin’.
