Turkish Lahmacun Recipe
Lahmacun is a well-known delicious Turkish street food of all time. It is great street food and you can mostly find it in any restaurant in Turkey. It is also known as Turkish pizza but has a very thin crust, topped with ground beef, vegetables, spices, and tomato mixture.
You can garnish the lahmacun with fresh tomatoes, parsley, and a squeeze of lemon juice and eat rolled up like a burrito. It is so yummy especially with a glass of “Ayran” (Yogurt drink). And from now on you will be able to make it home!
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 10 gr. fresh yeast or 1 tsp dry yeast you can also make it without yeast
- 1 tsp salt 1 tsp vegetable oil
- about 3 cups all-purpose flour don’t add all at once
For the topping:
- 250 gr. ground beef
- 1 medium-size onion
- 2 medium-size tomatoes
- a handful of parsley leaves
- 2 sweet green pepper
- 1 sweet roasting red pepper
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 tbsp tomato and red pepper paste
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp each sweet ground red pepper,red pepper flakes, isot pepper (optional), cumin, ground black pepper
- 2-3 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup water if needed to make a thin spreadable consistency
To cook:
- About 28-32 cm diameter nonstick pan with a lid or anything to cover it 🙂
To Serve:
- Lettuce, parsley, lemon, thinly sliced onions, tomatoes
Instructions
Simple dough with or without yeast
- To a mixing bowl add fresh or dry yeast (according to the package) along with 1 cup lukewarm water, close to 3 cups all-purpose flour, and 1/2 tsp salt. If you want you can make the dough without yeast too.
- Knead the mixture to make a soft unstick dough. Cover and let it rest until you make the topping
Preparing meat Topping
- Wash the veggies, take out the stems and seeds. In a food processor, process onion, green and red peppers, tomatoes, parsley, and garlic. You can make this step by finely chopping the veggies too. It is actually a preferable way to make it since the veggies don’t leave their juice much this way. But I prefer using a food processor for practical use and a similar result.
- Add minced meat, 1/2 tbsp tomato and red pepper paste, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp each sweet ground red pepper, red pepper flakes, pepper (optional), cumin, ground black pepper, 2-3 tbsp olive oil, and process. Drizzle water and mix to have a spreadable consistency.
Shaping & Cooking
- Cut the rested dough to 8 even pieces and shape it into a ball. Dusting the countertop with little flour roll out the dough with a rolling pin to about 1-2 mm thin or to fit to nonstick wide pan.
- Meanwhile, heat a wide nonstick or cast-iron pan. (my pan size is about 32cm) If your pan size is smaller you can make smaller dough pieces to fit to the pan.
- If have, transfer the dough onto a pizza transfer board and spread a good layer of topping over the dough with your hand, not leaving any white space. slide the lahmacun into hot pan and close the lid to cook over medium-high heat. Alternately after spreading the meat topping quickly transfer with your hand, being careful not to stretch the lahmacun too much, and cook. To shorten the time you can use two pans.
Baking The Lahmacun In The Oven
- Instead of cooking on the stovetop in the pan, you can also bake lahmacun in the 250C preheated oven. Use either pizza stone and cook like pizza or in the oven tray. Just make sure to bake the dough and top evenly. Depends on the oven you might need to put the tray first on the bottom shelf and then to the top for it.
- In order to prevent getting dry and to let them stay warm place cooked lahmacun in an tray stacking top side facing each other and cover with another tray. You can always reheat them if you like to make them crispy and hot after cooking all of it.
Video
Notes
How To ServeYou can serve lahmacun with thinly sliced lettuce, red onions, parsley leaves. Just serve them separately on a big plate and place over lahmacun, squeeze lemon juice over, wrap and enjoy!