There are numerous variations on the topic grilled meat + yoghurt + tomato sauce + bread in Turkish cuisine, each with a specific name. The best known is probably İskender (kebap), where the meat is a döner and additionally to the basic combination you get melted butter poured over this very yummy, very non-slimming delicacy..

One of my three favourites in this category (I won’t disclose the other two yet, but they will get their proper place in this blog – promise!) is Manisa kebabı, the kebap from Manisa.

Historically and cuisinewise, Manisa is a very interesting region in western Turkey and it will definitely receive extra mention in my bits and pieces section asap. But this text is going into the recipe category, so now I will describe the kebap itself in order to convince you to give it a try.

While I was researching the Turkish sites to check how typical the version you get in an average lokanta (Turkish restaurant) is, I found that a traditional Manisa kebabı is in fact not necessarily served with yoghurt and tomato sauce, but with melted butter and sumac. It is a meal with about 300 year long tradition. At that time master Halil İbrahim came from Arabic lands to Manisa, opened a shop there and prepared the first Manisa kebabı.

In this case, the word kebap refers to meatballs which look like Balkan ćevapčići, and are traditionally minimalistically seasoned, even the modern recipes don’t use much more than salt in the meat mixture. The proper version is charcoal grilled, but I made them on a heavy iron grill pan and they were also really good, minus the typical grill scent of course. The meat should be beef with a bit of lamb, but living in a country where no minced lamb is available (our Croatian lambs are too skinny 🤣), I found pure beef works equally well.

So, what are is a Manisa kebabı made of? Doubly minced beef, or beef with lamb in about 4 :1 ratio, salt, tirnak pidesi (a type of Turkish flatbread), grilled tomatoes and peppers, parsley, sumac, butter and, if desired, yoghurt and tomato sauce. Maybe you are now giving up after reading that you need a special flatbread, but don’t! Tirnak pidesi is not that hard to make yourself (I will give a recipe soon in this blog) and if you neither want to make it yourself nor have a place to buy it, there is absolutely no reason not to use your favourite flatbread instead. So, here is my recipe…

⌚ Overnight cooling + ca. 45 min preparation (if using ready made flatbread)

🇹🇷 🇹🇷

All se

🌱🌞🍂⛄ (best in 🌞 because of 🍅)

Suitable for: Manisa kebabı is halal, but not kosher nor vegetarian/vegan. It is not glutene-free nor lactose-free, but is without soy, nuts, shellfish and eggs.

PDF-recipe for collecting and printing

Ingredients 🛒 (serves 2)

For the kebap: 300 g doubly minced beef (or beef with some lamb), salt, and, optionally, a bit of black pepper and/or cumin, you can also add 1 tbsp of breadcrumbs (or tarhana, that is what I did) and/or a little bit of grated onin;

Other ingredients: 2 fresh tirnak pidesi (or other flatbread of your choice, about 150 g per piece), 2 pointed green peppers, 2 small firm tomatoes, and for garnishing 100 g butter, some flat parsley and sumac. Optionally: 300 ml Turkish (or Greek) yoghurt, 1 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp tomato purree, 1 skinned and chopped big tomato, water.

How to 🍳

Mix all the meatball ingredients, knead well, and leave in fridge overnight. Form meatballs of size and form of an average human finger (if grilling on a barbecue, you can put them on skewers for easier turning). Leave to get to room temperature, meanwhile (if you are going for the variant with yoghurt and sauce) beat the yoghurt with a spoon to make it smooth, and prepare the tomato sauce: Heat the 1 tbsp butter, stir with tomato purree, add finely chopped skinned tomato and about 100-150 ml water. You can add some salt too. Stir well, let it simmer for about 15 minutes stirring occasionally.

Halve the small tomatoes, with a pointed knife make small cuts in the peppers. Grill the meatballs and the tomatoes and peppers on barbecue or grill pan.

Melt the butter. Cut the flatbread into small pieces (if grilling the meat on a barbecue, you can shortly grill the bread before cutting too), arrange the pieces on a warm plate. If using, pour yoghurt over the bread, then the tomato sauce over the yoghurt. Then come the meatballs and the grilled veggies, then the melted butter. Sprinkle with sumac and parsley, and enjoy!