You need to try this Turkish lahmacun recipe soon!
I am a big fan of Turkish cuisine. You might have noticed that will all the new, tried and tested Turkish recipes I’ve been posting lately. Lahmacun are similar to Italian pizza but they are different. This lahmacun recipe demonstrates how they are made with step by step photographs.
What are Lahmacun?
Lahmacun is a thin and crispy flatbread from the Middle East and is popular in Turkey, Armenia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, and Syria. It’s often called Turkish pizza, Armenian pizza, or Kurdish pizza, but it’s not technically pizza because it doesn’t contain cheese. The name comes from the Arabic lahma bi’ajeen, which means “meat with dough”.
Lahmacun is traditionally made with a dough that’s sometimes unleavened, so it doesn’t need to rise before cooking. You top the dough with a spiced minced meat mixture, often lamb or beef, along with vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, and onions, and herbs like coriander and parsley. Lahmacun is traditionally cooked in a clay oven but you can easily make lahmacun in your home oven.
About this lahmacun recipe.
To make it easy on yourself, I recommend purchasing ready-made pizza dough balls. This will save you the time of having to make your own. I usually make my own dough and use this recipe.
Although it is best to use shop-bought or homemade dough, you could also prepare lahmacun using tortillas. When I’m in the US, I purchase raw homemade tortillas which work really well. Using prepared tortillas is also good as they become really crispy when baked in the oven.
How do you make lahmacun?
There are many different versions but they are a quite similar. Once you have your base: tortillas or dough, you need to prepare the topping.
I would like you to think of the topping as you would a thick pizza sauce but it is just a bit thicker. You blend all of the topping ingredients together, including the meat until you have a thick paste. The paste, using this lahmacun recipe will be thick but thin enough that you can still easily spread it over your base dough with a knife or your hands.
Depending on what you use to cook your lahmacun, it could take from one minute to 15 minutes to cook.
What should you cook your lahmacun in?
Traditionally, lahmacun are cooked in a wood burning oven. So if you have on, use it! I like to heat my pizza oven up to about 700°F or hotter as the lahmacun cook in about a minute. You could use a pizza stone in your barbecue which will take a few minutes longer or your oven.
Yes, cooking your lahmacun in your oven works well but it will take longer to cook each lahmacun.
Can you up or downscale this recipe?
Yes. This recipe serves 6 but as you will see from the ingredients, how many you make is up to you. Just downscale the amount of meat paste you make or make it all and freeze what you don’t need. Keeping it in the fridge for a few days is a great way of having it on hand to make more as and when you want them. Remember though, the meat is raw so you do need to cook it before picking!
Which came first, lahmacun or pizza?
Although lahmacun are often called Turkish pizza, they have been made long before the existence of pizza. The origins of lahmacun can be traced back to the Assyrians in northern Mesopotamia over 3,000 years ago.
Modern pizza evolved in Naples, Italy between the 16th and mid-18th century from similar flatbread dishes. The word “pizza” was first documented in 997 AD. Although pizza is much better known in the West, you need to try this Middle Eastern version and experience why they have been around for so long!
How long can you store the meat paste in the fridge?
You can make the meat paste 3 to 4 days before spreading it over your lahmacuns. In fact, as it sits in the fridge, the flavours will develop and it will be even better.
If you happen to have leftover lahmacuns, you can store those in your fridge for 3 to 4 days too. I recommend reheating them in the microwave for ease or you could place them back in a hot oven and let them bake until heated through.
Can you freeze lahmacuns?
Sure. I often do as they are good to have on hand for a last minute snack. Although you should let them defrost before reheating for best results, sometimes I just place them frozen in my microwave for about 3 minutes or until hot.
If you do decide to freeze cooked lahmacuns or the meat paste to make them, be sure to freeze in an air tight container and label and date it. Everything will freeze well for up to 3 months.
Step by step photographs.
Get all the ingredients for the meat paste together and prepared before you start.
Place the bell pepper, onion, garlic, tomatoes and spices in a food processor or blend and pulse a few times.
Add the meat and parsley and then blend until you have a thick but spreadable paste.
The finished paste will look something like this.
Take a dough ball and flatten in. Then roll it out into a thin, tortilla like shape. You can use raw or cooked tortillas for this recipe too.
Once you have the dough rolled out, spread the meat paste all over it.
Place it in your oven and cook until the bottom is browned and crispy and the top is bubbling hot and cooked through.
As you finish cooking the lahmacuns, be sure to stack them to keep them warm.
You can eat these topped with sauces or just a good Turkish onion salad. Fold them in half like a taco.
Or, roll them up like this. Rolling lahmacun is the more traditional way to eat them.
If you like this lahmacun recipe, you might like to try some of these other Turkish recipes!
- Turkish Style Mediterranean Grilled Fish
- Tantuni – Grilled Steak Wraps
- Beef Shish Kabobs
- Slow Cooked Lamb
- Turkish Chicken Kebabs
- Muhammara – A traditional Pepper meze
- Turkish Onion Salad
- Baba Ganoush – Eggplant (Aubergine) meze
- Easy Hummus – Really smooth and delicious
- Turkish Ezme Salad
- Lavash Flatbread
- Homemade Pitas
- Homemade Tahini
- Tahini Sauce
Have you tried this lahmacun recipe?
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Lahmacun
Ingredients
- 6 pizza dough balls (approx 125g each), shop bought or homemade
- Semolina for dusting
- FOR THE MEAT PASTE
- 1/2 red bell pepper
- 1/2 green bell pepper
- 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, smashed
- 30g (1 oz) flat leaf parsley
- 2 tso Aleppo chilli flakes
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp ground allspice (optional)
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp red pepper paste
- 300g (10.5 oz) minced beef or lamb
- TO SERVE
- 2 lemons, quartered
- 1 batch Turkish onion salad
- 1 tsp allepo chilli flakes, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to its highest temperature and place a pizza stone inside to heat for one hour. Heating the pizza stone for an hour is optional but it will help give the lahmacun a nice and crispy brown base when cooked. It will also speed up the cooking process.
- Start by making the meat paste that goes on top of the lahmacun. In a blender or food processor, pulse the bell peppers, onion and garlic to break them down some.
- Add the parsley, meat, all the ground spices and salt, tomato paste and pepper paste and continue blending until you have a thick paste. It will look thick but will still be thin enough to easily spread over the flatbreads by hand.
- Dust a clean work surface with semolina and roll out one pizza dough ball or use another base bread of your choice. Divide the meat paste into 6 equal portion and spread one portion over the lahmacun base. You can do this with your hands or a knife. I find using my hands much easier.
- Dust a pizza paddle or thin baking tray with semolina. Then quickly pull your lahmacun onto the paddle while pushing the paddle underneath.
- Slide the lahmacun onto the pizza stone. If you are using a pizza oven, you just use the base of the oven and no pizza stone is needed.
- Cook for one to 15 minutes. Pizza ovens cook at a much higher heat than most conventional ovens. My lahmacuns take about a minute in the pizza oven and 10 minutes in my kitchen oven but I can get a lot more lahmacuns in my kitchen oven than my pizza oven.
- Cook untul the base is starting to brown and the meat paste is sizzling hot. Transfer to a clean surface and continue cooking until all of the lahmacuns are cooked.
- Traditionally, the cooked lahmacuns are stacked which keeps them warm while you are cooking the remaining lahmacuns.
- Serve hot or warm as they are or top them with your a good Turkish onion salad or other sauces of choice. You can eat them flat like a pizza but they are usually folded in half or rolled up like a burrito to eat.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 434Total Fat: 15gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 60mgSodium: 962mgCarbohydrates: 49gFiber: 5gSugar: 6gProtein: 25g