Lahmacun recipe

A paper-thin Turkish flatbread spread with raw minced lamb and red pepper paste, blasted in a very hot oven for a few minutes.

2 hours and 30 minutesmedium12 ingredients

Ingredients

• 300 g ground lamb
• 2 tbsp red pepper paste
• 500 g bread flour
• 300 ml water
• 7 g yeast
• 1 onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 tomato
• 1 bunch parsley
• 3 clove garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp salt

How to make Lahmacun

1. Knead 500 g of bread flour, 300 ml of water, 7 g of yeast and 2 tsp of salt for 10 minutes. No oil goes into this dough. Let it rise 1 hour, divide into 10 balls, rest 20 minutes.
2. Chop 1 onion, 1 red bell pepper, 1 tomato, a bunch of parsley and 3 garlic cloves very fine, or pulse them to a rough paste, then squeeze out the water. Wet topping means soggy bread.
3. Work in 300 g of twice-minced lamb, 2 tbsp of red pepper paste (biber salçası), 2 tsp of cumin and salt until you have a spreadable paste.
4. Heat the oven with a stone or an upturned tray inside at its maximum, 250 to 300 °C, for a full 30 minutes.
5. Roll each ball out to a 25 cm round barely 1 mm thick, almost translucent.
6. Spread a thin layer of the meat paste right to the edge. It goes on raw and cooks with the bread. Browning it in a pan first dries it out and it is no longer lahmacun.
7. Bake 4 to 6 minutes, just until the edges crisp and the meat has turned colour. Longer and it becomes a cracker.
8. Pile on parsley and onion, squeeze lemon over, roll it up and eat it with your hands.

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