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Adana Kebabı

Pressed onto a wide flat skewer with the palm, never threaded, and the tail fat is what holds it there.

Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains lamb.

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS PRESSED ONTO A WIDE FLAT SKEWER WITH THE PALM, NEVER THREADED, and the tail fat is what holds it there. A handful of the mixture is laid along the blade and worked outward with a wet palm, squeezing and smearing until it clings in an even strip twenty-odd centimetres long. Nothing binds it but the fat: no egg, no breadcrumb, no flour. At room temperature the fat is soft enough to smear and sticky enough to grip the metal, and over the fire it renders and welds the meat to the blade as it sets. A lean mix slides off into the coals within a minute, which is the one way this dish fails and it fails completely.
  2. THE MEAT IS HAND-CHOPPED AND NOT MINCED. Two knives or a heavy cleaver on a board, worked until the pieces are two or three millimetres. A machine mincer crushes and smears the fat into the lean, and the mixture goes pasty and bounces rather than holding a loose open texture. Hand-chopped, you can still see separate specks of fat and meat in the raw strip, and that is what it should look like.
  3. THE PROPORTION IS NEARLY A QUARTER FAT AND THAT IS NOT A MISPRINT. Two hundred grams of tail fat to seven hundred of shoulder. It is a great deal more than any mince this site uses elsewhere, and it is doing two jobs at once: binding the kebab to the skewer, and basting it. Cut to a tenth, the kebab both falls off and comes out dry.
  4. THE SKEWER IS WIDE AND FLAT -- A CENTIMETRE AND A HALF OR MORE. Not the narrow flat skewer a şiş uses. The mixture needs surface area to grip, and a narrow blade carries a fat sausage of meat that cooks unevenly and sags off the edges.
  5. THE HANDS ARE KEPT WET AND THE MIXTURE KEPT COLD. A bowl of cold water beside the board, hands dipped between each skewer. Dry hands drag the fat and it smears; warm hands melt it. The bowl of mixture goes back in the fridge between skewers if the kitchen is warm.
  6. The lamb shoulder and tail fat chopped BY HAND with a heavy knife to 2 or 3 mm, until specks of fat and lean are still separately visible.
  7. Mixed with the pepper flakes, chopped red pepper, salt and black pepper, worked by hand 2 MINUTES only.
  8. CHILLED 1 HOUR, so the fat is firm.
  9. The charcoal lit and burned down to grey-white embers with no flame.
  10. A bowl of cold water set beside the board. Hands WETTED.
  11. A handful of mixture laid along a WIDE FLAT skewer and PRESSED and smeared outward with the palm into an even strip about 20 cm long and 1.5 cm thick.
  12. The edges pinched onto the blade so nothing overhangs. Hands re-wetted for each skewer.
  13. Laid over the embers and left 3 MINUTES without moving, so the fat sets against the metal.
  14. TURNED and cooked 3 to 4 MINUTES more, turning twice.
  15. WATCHED for flares: rendering tail fat drips hard and the skewer is moved aside rather than the fire damped.
  16. TESTED: the strip should be firm, dark at the edges and just cooked through. Served on flatbread with raw onion and sumac.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes