Adana Kebab
Hand-minced lamb with tail fat and red pepper, pressed onto flat skewers and grilled over charcoal. Named for the city, and protected there.
Photograph credit: Adana Kebap (image of Adana kebabı on Wikidata Q352253) by Garrett Ziegler · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Build the Meal Around Adana Kebab
- Sumac onion salad
- Ayran
- Charred green peppers
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Turkish Pilav.
Photograph credit: Adana kebab by Anatolianpride · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
How to Make Adana Kebab
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Mix the lamb with the chopped red pepper, grated onion, garlic, pepper flakes, salt, cumin and black pepper.
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Knead hard for 5 minutes, until the mixture turns sticky and comes away from the bowl in one mass.
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Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
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Toss the sliced red onions with the sumac, parsley and olive oil and set aside.
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Divide the meat into 4 and press each portion along a flat metal skewer, squeezing it into a long flat strip.
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Heat a charcoal grill until the coals are white, or a griddle pan until it smokes.
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Grill 12 minutes, turning every 3 minutes, until well charred and cooked through.
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Warm the flatbreads on the edge of the grill and char the tomatoes and green peppers alongside.
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Slide the kebabs off onto the flatbreads.
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Top with the sumac onions and serve with the charred vegetables.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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Worth Knowing Before You Cook
Twenty per cent fat, and knead until it is sticky.
An hour in the fridge before shaping.
Flat skewers, or it rolls and falls off.
Changing the Recipe
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Leftovers
Shaped raw kebabs freeze 2 months. Cooked, they keep 2 days.
Adana Kebab: Your Questions Answered
How long does Adana Kebab take to make?
30 minutes of preparation and 15 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of chilling the mince, so allow 1 hour 45 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 4.
Adana Kebab Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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