Turkish Kofta Kebab _Köfte

Hi everyone. Merhaba. This is Ayşenur Altan. Welcome to Turkish food and travel. Köfte is a popular meatball type of dish in Turkey and the Middle East. We have many köfte recipes and kebabs in Turkish cuisine. I will make a köfte kebab the way we make it at home, easily using a food processor in this episode. I'm also going to show you how you can complete this delicious meat dish to serve as an authentic menu. So let's get started. I have 500 grams ground beef. It's a mix of lamb and beef, 30% to 70%. 2 medium sized onions. Big handful of parsley. 3 to 4 tablespoons breadcrumbs. I use tail bread, just process it and keep it in freezer. 1 teaspoon each black pepper, salt, hot paprika or sweet you can use. And a quarter of a teaspoon baking soda. To give you an idea, I will stuff some of the meatballs, the köftes, with kaşar cheese. I'm going to use a big food processor for this. It really makes everything so easy. But traditionally we just grate the onions and mix everything in a big bowl and knead by hand. It's up to you, you can do both ways. So first I added the onion and the parsley, taking out the big stems. I'm going to process both until they are in fine pieces. Not like a puree. It should be. This is enough. Next going to add the meat. Breadcrumbs. Don't throw your tail bread, you can use for making köftes. And the seasonings. And a small hint, I use baking soda to give like a chewy texture to my köftes. And this is a good hint used by restaurants. But some people, home cookers I can say, prefer to use it and some don't. But I like to have some chewiness on my köftes so I do use it. Just mix everything by pulsing until everything is kneaded well. We're going to continue to knead a little bit. By hand. If you have time, it is always better to rest the köfte mixture in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours. Or you can even make it overnight or in the morning and shape it close to dinner time. It will create more flavor when it is rested. So since I'm going to fill half of it with some kashar cheese, I just barely separate the köfte mixture in half. And going to shape it now. I dip my hands to butter from time to time to prevent sticking. And just shape it in a ball and press it to make it flat. We want to make it as flat as possible because it will come together when it cooks and will be more like a ball shape. While I continue to shape the köftes, I would like to remind you that if you like my videos, you can support me by commenting, liking and especially sharing my videos on your social media accounts so it can reach to more people on YouTube and other platforms. So with the half of the mixture, I have about 8-10 pieces of köftes. And for the second half, I'm going to fill it with some cheese. You can use kashar cheese. This is what we call dil peyniri. It oozes more. It's another similar kind of cheese. Similar to kashar we have. So in this version, I had a little less than a mandarin size of piece first. Make it very flat. And after placing two pieces of cheese, I close it more and seal the ends, the sides. It would be a nice surprise to have cheese filled in the köftes for cheese lovers. So I have my köftes ready to cook. Let's go to stove top. As a side dish, I'm going to grill some tomatoes and green peppers. These are sweet green peppers. I have big giant tomatoes so I'm going to cut them in wedges. And to cook my köftes and wedges, I'm going to use cast iron griddle here. It's already heated. I just brushed it with some olive oil. You can also use heavy bottom nonstick pan or grill it. And now it's time to sizzle. You want to cook inside the köftes fully so the heat should be not very high or medium, I can say. So it can cook evenly. You can partially cover it with a lid to have some steam on top. I'm going to complete my menu with some Turkish pilav with orzo, şehriyeli pilav. I have the full recipe. I'm going to add the links for you. It is really a traditional way of serving the köfte. Let's check the köfte. It's been about 3-4 minutes probably. And 3 of them are plain köftes and 3 of them has cheese in it. It has nice crust and golden-like color. So I turned it over. And also the tomatoes. Since the peppers are in different shape, they might need to press it. So I have this grill press but you can use your pan for it too. And here I wanted to show you another traditional way of serving the pilav, rice pilav, which is close to serving time. You just melt some butter and cook until it has some nutty flavor and some brown color. And simply drizzle it all over the cooked pilav. Gently fold it to mix everything with a ladle. And it's just a way of serving it with a double flavor coming from the butter. I should mention that sadly the köftes look darker because of the light coming from the plate and the rice pilav in the kitchen. But I can assure you that they have nice golden color but not burned. So this is how you serve it. Just fill it generously with köftes, pilav, grilled tomato and pepper and dig in. So I hope you give it a try, this delicious traditional dish of Turkey. And let me know, you can share your photos with me from my Instagram account Turkish Food & Travel. I have many other kebab and köfte recipes including köfte potato and eggplant kebabs, you can check. Thanks for watching, I hope to see you in another delicious Turkish food recipes and travel vlogs. Afiyet olsun.