Turkish soups are known as Çorbalar. Çorba is the singular of soup and is pronounced chor/ba.
How about a bowl of delicious carrot soup
Soups are a very important part of Turkish cuisine and the Turks pride themselves in making very tasty, nutritious bowls of soup. Most often these will be created using the freshest of ingredients and indeed the flavours really come through. At certain times of the year, it's more convenient to use dried legumes especially lentils in every colour and shape available.
The Turkish lentil soups tend to be heavier than the fresh summer vegetable soups. This makes perfect sense as the best time for heavy Turkish soups is when it is cold and we need to really warm ourselves up. That is when a hearty soup comes into its own.
Tarhana is one of the oldest known instant soups. Possibly the first of its kind, created centuries ago by the Turks living in Central Asia and then spreading widely. Combining many foods that have been collected and harvested over the summer, they are then cooked, dried and crushed to create a delicious soup. It is…
This celeriac soup is quite exquisite and ridiculously easy to make, with very few ingredients. It has a lovely rich, velvety texture with a distinctly fresh but full flavour. It is really hard to stop at just one bowl celeriac soup. Celeriac (kereviz in Turkish) is still available in the markets but with the weather…
Authentic Turkish soups are all about grains. In some parts of the country especially in the more rural areas, soup is eaten for breakfast. You can understand the logic of that: imagine if you are a shepherd on some bleak hillside - a warming soup would be just the thing to give you nourishment to start your day.
I had a wonderful trip to the East of Turkey a few years ago and was dazzled by the choice of full, warming, thick soups for breakfast. The soup was often served with a large chunk or two of peeled onion and a few long sprigs of parsley for the breath afterwards.
Sitting over my steaming bowl of green lentil soup is an experience I will never forget. There was ice at my feet in this little market square and I was sat down at a little table, fit for a child on a baby stool and bent over spooning up every drop of my delicious revitalising soup at 8 o'clock in the morning.
I expect this soup seller had begun preparing this delicious green lentil soup before it was even light and after a few hours work, he was still dressed in a shirt, jumper and jacket and a knitted hat pulled down over his ears. When he spoke, a mist of steam emitted from his mouth it was so cold outside.
I was due to catch a bus to Mardin and hence was up early and wanting to catch the first stirrings of daylight in the market square for my travel photography collection.
And then there's the possibility of downing a wonderful bowl of soup at the other end of the day, well actually well into the night in fact. The very last meal before finally hitting the sack after a heavy night of drinking and dancing? What are you telling us, Lulu, you say.
A very common practice in all parts of Turkey is to order a soup at one of the infamous soup kitchens after a late night out. Summer or winter, it doesn't matter, the Turks believe that the end to a really good evening will always be to partake in a bowl of warming soup. This particularly applies if you have been partying hard.
After just one try of eating soup at 4 o'clock in the morning, you will be hooked. No more standing around the döner kebab van in a muddy old car park. Off to a Turkish Soup Kitchen for you! It is a really remarkable taste sensation and experience.
A soup kitchen will usually offer at least four different Turkish soups and if it stays open till the wee hours of the morning, it's highly likely that below are the four choices you will be offered.
These soups are always served with a small pot of pul biber, finely chopped red pepper that is quite spicy and you can drop a pinch on your soup or more as you wish.
Also some wedges of lemon which all the soups below require along with a small saucer of fresh parsley. A little plate of pickles will accompany the dish along with a basket of fresh white bread cut into thick slices.
I don't think there is a direct translation for this. It is a special mixture that one adds at the end of making a soup or some various dishes, to add flavour and texture. It consists of an egg yolk that is mixed with the juice of half or one lemon and added quickly to a boiling broth whilst madly stirring.
It adds a particular texture and taste to soups and is definitely worth taking the time to add the extra step when making chicken soup or tomato soup.
Creamy Jerusalem artichoke soup