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Tire Köfte

Flattened thin between wet palms and grilled, never rolled into a ball at any stage.

Beef, Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains beef, lamb.

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS FLATTENED THIN BETWEEN WET PALMS AND NEVER ROLLED INTO A BALL AT ANY STAGE. A lump of the mixture is passed from one wet hand to the other, pressed flatter each time, until it is a thin oval barely a centimetre thick and about the size of a palm. That shape is the dish: thin means the whole thing is crust and almost no interior, so it cooks in three minutes and tastes overwhelmingly of charcoal and rendered fat. Rolled into a ball and then squashed, the mixture gets compacted first and the köfte comes out dense; patted thin from the start, it stays loose and open.
  2. THERE IS A QUARTER FAT IN IT AND THERE HAS TO BE. Two hundred grams of tail fat to six hundred of beef. A thin patty over fierce heat has nowhere to hide: without that much fat it is dry in ninety seconds. The fat is chopped fine rather than minced, so it stays in visible specks that render and leave the köfte riddled with holes.
  3. NO ONION, NO BREAD, NO EGG, NO BICARBONATE. Four ingredients and nothing else. Onion water would make a mixture too wet to pat thin, and any binder makes it hold together in a way that defeats the open texture. This is the barest köfte on this site and the shortest ingredient list.
  4. IT IS KNEADED HARD FOR TEN MINUTES, WHICH LOOKS LIKE A CONTRADICTION AND IS NOT. With no binder at all, the only thing holding a thin patty together is the protein drawn out of the beef by working it. Ten minutes of real kneading makes a mixture that can be patted paper-thin without tearing. The İnegöl köfte on the previous page avoids exactly this -- but it has bicarbonate and an overnight rest doing the work instead.
  5. THE FIRE IS FIERCE AND THEY ARE TURNED ONCE. Hot embers, ninety seconds a side. At this thickness a third turn means an overcooked köfte, and a moderate fire gives a grey one that never crusts.
  6. The tail fat chopped FINE by hand -- not minced -- so it stays in visible specks.
  7. The beef, fat, salt, pepper and pepper flakes mixed and KNEADED HARD 10 MINUTES, until the mixture is sticky and holds together with no binder.
  8. Covered and chilled 1 HOUR.
  9. The charcoal lit and burned to FIERCE embers -- a hand bearable above them for about 2 seconds.
  10. A bowl of cold water beside the board.
  11. A lump of mixture passed between WET PALMS, pressed flatter each time, into a thin oval about 1 cm thick and the size of a palm. NOT rolled first.
  12. All of them patted out before any go on the fire.
  13. Laid on the grill and cooked 90 SECONDS without moving.
  14. TURNED ONCE and given 90 SECONDS more.
  15. TESTED: the surface should be well crusted and the inside just cooked. They are too thin to rest.
  16. Served straight off the fire on flatbread with raw onion and pepper flakes.

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