Turkish · Main
Adana Kebab
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with char used as punctuation, acid holding everything up to the light, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 600g lamb, hand-chopped or coarsely ground, ~20% fat
- 1 tbsp Turkish red pepper flakes (pul biber) + 1 tsp Urfa if you have it
- 1 red pepper, grated and squeezed dry
- 1 tsp salt, no other seasoning: that is the point
- Flat metal skewers, lavash, sumac onions
Equipment
Grill · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Grilling over live coalsSalting to draw the water outShaping by hand
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Knead meat, peppers and salt 5 min until tacky and pale: the knead is the binder, there is no egg. 5 min
- Chill 1 h. Press onto wide flat skewers with wet hands, ridging with your fingers. 60 min
- Grill over hot coals, turning often, 8–10 min, fat dripping and flaring. 10 min
- Pull onto lavash so the bread catches the juices; pile with sumac onions and parsley.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
- Also Right
- Malbec
- From the Taps
- Porter
- Zero-Proof
- Pomegranate spritz
Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.
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