Turkish Food 101: Breakfast

Typical Turkish Breakfast

After the explanation of some typical turkish drinks before, now some information about the what is what in Turkish breakfast. Yet Turkey has not such a big breakfast culture as for example Germany in matters of variations, especially of bread. Nevertheless, at least on the weekends, people gather together for splendid breakfasts with quite a range of foods at home or even at cafes and restaurants. The kahvalti - the turkish word for breakfast - is relatively healthy, provides quite some variations, and always comes with some tomatoes, cucumber and olives. Includes some juice, but less likely a coffee (kahve), which is more likely to be consumed after it, but with the typical tea, cay. 

Turkish Food: Breakfast

• Ekmek - Bread in different variations, mostly soft
• Börek - A baked pastry made with phyllo dough and stuffed with a one or more vegetables and sometimes meat or cheese
• Peynirli Börek - Cheese börek
• Kymali Börek - Ground beef börek
• Simit - Relatively dry bagel with sesame
• Beyaz peynir - Feta cheese
• Kasar - Kind of a cheddar cheese variation
• Sucuk - Beef sausage, spicy in various levels
• Menemen - Scrambled eggs with green pepper and tomatoes, sometimes with onion
• Pogaca - Pastry which comes in different variations, plain (sade), cheese (peynirli), zeytinli (black olives) or kiyma (minced meat)
• Bal - Honey, not to be missed, normally in combination with butter (tereyagi)
• Kahve - Coffee, but more likely to be consumed after the breakfast, the breakfast goes more with the black tea Cay, water (su) or juice (suyu), which often happens to be orange juice - portakal suyu - or cherry juice (visne suyu)