I have been struggling to get a good photo of these kebobs since our return to Toronto in December last year. The lighting is brutal. I did get some specialty lighting for this instance but it’s not exactly what I had hoped for, it still has that fake lighting tinge. So I am stuck with winter lighting for my photos.
This recipe came about from a trip to a local Türkish restaurant where we ordered these wonderful kebabs. They are packed with flavour and the toppings don’t hurt. In Türkiye, they would serve this with pickled onions but we find them too strong so I made pickled cucumbers and a tasty yogurt harissa sauce. It was a wonderful meal.
When I am in Türkiye, I will be purchasing the authentic Türkish kebab skewers which are actually about 2.5 cm or 1 inch wide, as well as a kebab press as I hope to make these for the freezer in large quantities. Türkish kebabs should not touch the grill, they should cook above the grill, soaking up the smoke from the grill but without caramelizing the meat. The flat wide skewers allow you to pile on the meat with all the inclusions and not have bits fall off into the fire.
I should have put the meat in front, but because my skewers are not wide enough, we had to rest the kebabs on the grill to cook. And if I am being completely honest, we were too hungry. They are sooo darn good.
Türkish kebabs
Makes about 1200 g of kebab meat mixture.
For the original recipe, please click here.
Ingredients:
- 454 g ground lamb
- 454 g ground veal
- 1 roasted pepper, skinned, seeded and roughly chopped
- 1 sweet onion, roughly chopped
- 10 g roasted garlic purée
- 1/2 bunch of cilantro, stems, and leaves
- 1.5 g salt
- 1.5 g black pepper
- 10 g sumac
- 5 g ground coriander
- 2 g ground cumin
- 1.5 g sweet paprika
Directions:
- Add all of the ingredients into the large bowl of your food processor and process until smooth and all of the ingredients are evenly chopped and distributed in the meat mixture.
- Form 100 g of the meat mixture around each kabab skewer and rest of a flat surface. Use immediately or freeze individually on a flat surface.
- Cook on a grill at 350° F until the internal temperature is 160° F.
- Serve with unleavened flatbread and a pickled cucumber with a harissa yogurt sauce.
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