It is interesting to try dishes from different cuisines of the world. Better yet, cook them yourself. You can try to make berek yourself.
What kind of dish is this?
Berek is a dish related to Turkish cuisine, which consists of small baked bagels made from unleavened thinly rolled yufka dough or lavash. There are other designs: twisted cigar-shaped tubes and even a pie formed from tubes.
How to cook?
Preparing berek is not particularly difficult, so you can make it at home. Two options are described below.
Option one
This recipe uses the Turkish traditional yufka dough and you can make it yourself. The set of components will be like this:
For the yufka:
- two glasses of water;
- 600 g flour;
- Art. l. vegetable oil;
- Art. l. table vinegar 9%;
- tsp with a heap of salt.
For filling and soaking:
- 200 g of pickled cheese, for example feta cheese;
- egg;
- five tbsp. l. vegetable oil;
- fresh parsley or other herbs of your choice;
- egg;
- three tbsp. l. natural yogurt without additives (can be replaced with yogurt).
Instructions:
- Start with the test. Sift the flour and combine it with salt. In a separate container, mix all the liquid ingredients: egg, water, vinegar and oil. Gradually begin to pour the liquid mixture into the flour, knead the dough with your hands. Let it sit for about half an hour, then beat it with your hands and start rolling it into a thin layer. This can be done on a board or clean cloth. Prepare two rectangular layers.
- Prepare the filling: either cut the cheese or mash it with a fork. Chop the greens and mix them with the cheese.
- It's time to fill. Combine yogurt, egg and butter (leave a little for greasing the baking sheet). Beat this mixture with a mixer, fork or whisk until smooth.
- Grease a baking sheet or mold with the remaining vegetable oil.
- Place one layer of yufka in the mold first, then the other. Coat the dough with filling, place half of the filling.
- Wrap the filling with the top layer of the yufka, coat it with filling and lay out the remaining filling. Cover everything with the remaining dough, coat it with filling again.
- Bake the berek at 200 degrees until browned for about twenty-five or thirty minutes.
Option two
It is much easier to make berek from lavash. You will need:
- packaging of ready-made thin pita bread;
- a glass of natural, additive-free yogurt;
- two eggs;
- couple of st. l. olive oil;
- 400 g feta or, for example, cheese;
- dill and cilantro;
- salt (optional, as the filling will be salty).
Process description:
- Get busy with the pita bread. Spread it on a flat surface and cut into triangles or rectangles.
- Prepare the filling. Mash the cheese with a fork or grind with a blender. Wash the greens, dry them and finely chop them with a knife.
- Prepare the fill. In a bowl, combine yogurt with eggs and butter, beat everything using a fork or mixer. Leave some oil, it will come in handy.
- Now coat the pieces of pita bread with the filling using a pastry brush or spoon. Place the filling and roll into rolls. If you are using triangles, start rolling from the narrow part to the wide part.
- Place all the preparations on an oiled baking sheet (you can cover the bottom with parchment), pour over the filling and place in the oven. Such bereks are baked for literally half an hour at 190 degrees. They should be well browned.
Simple recipes are discussed above, but homemade berek can have almost any filling, so experiment and add minced meat, vegetables and other products. Be sure to prepare a dish for your guests or family members to please them and surprise them with your culinary skills!
Which is made from ready-made dough - yufka. Now let's get acquainted with the real Aramaic börek. The word börek can be translated into Russian as pie, pie. And this means we will prepare yeast dough. There are two interesting nuances here that I would like to tell you about.
Firstly, I have never added both yeast and baking powder to yeast dough before, and to my question “why?” No one could answer me, I cook strictly according to the recipe, I don’t know whether the dough will be different (worse or better) if you don’t add baking powder. The dough turns out very airy. In Germany I use Weizenmehl typ 405 flour, although at first glance it seems “you need to add more flour”, do not add, otherwise the dough will be too stiff. For Russia - try it with your own flour.
Secondly, the Arameans measure the amount of dough with “flour”; to my question “how much dough are we making today?”, I always heard the answer “from 3 kg of flour”. “And water (or milk)?” - “How do we know how much it will take...” In Russia, as far as I remember, it was always the other way around, my grandmother taught “make dough for half a liter of milk” and “how much flour will it take.”
This was a small lyrical digression for those who also have the question “why?”
I prepared half a portion, but in vain, the pies are so delicious that they fly away in an instant. I took 1 egg and 1 white into the dough, and the yolk was used for coating.
So let's get started. The butter needs to be melted. Add milk, cream, eggs and salt.
Add yeast, flour and baking powder.
Knead the dough, I always do this in a bread maker. The Aramaic people bless the dough: they draw a cross with the edge of their right hand and say a few words. I don’t do this in a bread machine; it will rise just like that, but if I knead with my hands, I’ve also learned to do this.
For the filling, we'll take sheep cheese in brine; we don't need brine. Mash the cheese with a fork, cut the parsley, preferably only the leaves, without rough twigs. I couldn't buy parsley, so I took frozen. You can do without it at all.
After 1.5 hours the dough is ready.
Pinch off small pieces of dough with your hands.
Roll out very thin.
Place a little filling on one edge, otherwise the börek will be too salty.
We wrap it in a roll, while pinching the edges so that the filling does not leak out later.
This is such a cute cigar pie. As a result of this molding, the pies look like puff pastries. Half of the products yield 25-27 pieces.
Place the finished börek pies on a sheet, brush with egg and milk (shake with a fork).
Sprinkle the börek (optional) with sesame seeds and Schwarzkümmel, Wikipedia translated it for me as Kalinji, or nigella sativa, seidan, sedan, Nigella, black cumin, Roman coriander.
Börek is served with almost anything.
You can simply eat börek and wash it down with the sour milk drink “Daure” http://www.. This is ayran in Turkish.
You can just have it with yogurt. Possibly with dip. Maybe with a salad. Very tasty with tea. Or with BEER!
Bon appetit! Haniye!
Friends, I would like to present to you a recipe for crispy “Sigara börek” tubes made from thin and tender phyllo dough. This pastry is national.
Crispy rolls of cheese are traditionally made from the finest filo dough. In its homeland it is called “Sigara börek”, which are similar in shape to Cuban cigars, which is where the name itself comes from!
Filo dough can be purchased ready-made in large supermarkets. However, the price is not very cheap, so it is absolutely not economical to buy. You can prepare it at home yourself, but you need to be prepared for a labor-intensive process:
- first the dough is kneaded;
- then roll it out with a rolling pin;
- and at the end - they pull it out with their hands.
The most difficult task is to stretch it with your hands until it is as thick as tissue paper. But with the advent of experience, this problem gradually disappears.
I told you a detailed recipe on how to make phyllo dough earlier, you can watch it.
If you find it difficult to prepare, then use a store-bought equivalent. Also, some housewives simplify their work to a minimum and prepare a hot appetizer using regular puff pastry instead of dough. These crispy little pies cook quickly and disappear from the table in a flash.
Real Turkish “Börek Cigars”, rolled into tubes, usually have a diameter of no more than 2 cm. They are prepared with feta cheese, salted cottage cheese or meat. The latter are less popular, but you can try. But you don’t have to stop at these fillings! If you want to conduct culinary experiments, use for tender crispy rolls: cheese mass, fruits, vegetables, cheese, etc. This will no longer be the Turkish “Cigar Börek”, but still a tasty and original snack.
Let's see how to cook “Cigar börek”; for your convenience, I have prepared the recipe with step-by-step photos.
Filo dough – 200 g
Cheese cheese (or cottage cheese) – 200 g
Salt - a pinch
Eggs – 1 pc. for filling, 1 pc. for lubricating tubes
Cooking "Cigar börek"
1. Break the cheese and crumble it by mashing it with a fork (you can use a blender). If you have cottage cheese, mash it with a fork.
2. Add a raw egg and a pinch of salt to the crushed product. Do not overdo it with salt: if you have cheese, it is already salty and you may not need salt at all.
3. Mix the mass until it becomes homogeneous.
4. Next, let's start with the phyllo dough. In supermarkets it is sold already rolled out, so you just have to defrost it. If you decide to cook it yourself, first roll it out as thinly as possible with a rolling pin, being careful not to tear it. Then place it on the back of your palms and gently stretch it as thinly as possible. The stretched phyllo dough is considered ready when, when placed on a newspaper, the letters are visible through it.
Note: to prepare phyllo dough, combine wheat flour (220 grams), boiled water (150 ml), citric acid (1 tsp), vegetable oil (1 tbsp) and salt (pinch). Mix everything and stretch.
5. Cut the rolled out dough into sheets approximately 20 cm long, 15-18 cm wide and place the curd or cheese filling on it.
6. Fold in the edges and roll the dough into a roll to form a tube 2 cm wide.
7. Place the tubes on a baking tray.
8. Beat the egg with a fork and brush the tubes with a pastry brush so that they have an appetizing golden crust.
9. Heat the oven to 180 degrees and bake the products for 20-25 minutes.
10. Crispy and golden brown tubes can be consumed both warm and chilled. They are convenient to take with you on the road or give to children at school. And in Turkey it is customary to serve them for breakfast in the morning.
Bon appetit!
Video recipe “Cigar börek”
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Everyone's favorite börek is Su böreği. Su börei (su boregi) or water pie. I bake my böreks only from ready-rolled dough (Turkish yufka), so I have a lazy version.
But for real su boregi, we knead the dough ourselves. I only know the theory. The dough is mixed with a large number of eggs, thinly rolled out into layers and boiled in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. That’s why it’s called “water pie” (su boregi). All layers of dough are then generously greased with oil and only then filled with either cheese or meat filling.
Very tasty, but, in my opinion, very fatty. I offer my lightweight version, both in terms of time and effort, and in terms of calories.
Ingredients:
- 3 Turkish yufkas (thinly rolled out unleavened dough circles)
- 300 g white cheese (brynza or cottage cheese)
- 1 bunch of parsley
- pinch of salt and black pepper
- 2 tbsp. milk
- 2 eggs
- 6 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp. mineral water (with gas)
* Ingredients are for a medium-sized oven with a 30x35 cm baking tray. For a standard large oven, double all ingredients or use a baking dish.
First we prepare the filling.
The filling should taste salty. In my refrigerator I had overly salted goat cheese and completely unsalted lor peiniri (cottage cheese). So I mixed both types half and half, and it just tasted pleasantly salty. Mash the cheese in a bowl with a fork.
We wash a bunch of parsley, tear off the leaves and not very finely chop them with a knife. Add to the mashed cheese and mix.
Now prepare the egg-milk mixture to soak the dough. Break 2 eggs into a bowl, pour 2 tbsp milk and 6 tbsp vegetable oil (I used olive oil). Add salt, pepper and stir.
Turn on the oven at 200 C.
Now take a baking sheet, pour a little sunflower oil, and spread the oil with a brush over the bottom and sides of the baking sheet. Place the first yufka on the bottom of the baking sheet. We pull the edges of the yufka towards the center with folds, leaving the edges hanging down so that they approximately touch the table top. We will later need the hanging edges for hems.
In my photo I have half a yufka and a small uniform (15x25cm). I made a small berek from one yufka, since no one in our house likes bereks with cheese filling.
Using a ladle, pour the egg-milk mixture more or less evenly. It is not necessary to try to fill all areas, then everything will be distributed anyway.
We take the second yufka and, starting from the edge of the baking sheet, again cover the filling with random folds. Using your hands, distribute the folds more or less evenly across the baking sheet. Pour the filling with a ladle and add the remaining filling.
Similarly, lay out the last layer of yufka. Pour out the rest of the filling and tuck the hanging edges of the yufka towards the center.
Using your hands, lightly press the cake in several places. The filling will come to the top and “flood” the entire cake. This is normal; everything will be absorbed into the dough during baking.
Cut the burek into portions and... fill it with a glass of sparkling mineral water. This will give the börek additional tenderness and fluffiness.
Place the börek in the oven for 15-25 minutes, depending on your oven. After 15 minutes, we begin to check for the presence of a golden baked crust. The börek will swell to twice its original size and seem to “overflow its banks.” Don't worry, this is normal. Then he will settle down.
Remove the browned borek from the oven and leave to cool and settle. Cut into portions and you can serve them warm. Turkish böreks with cheese filling are served both warm and cold. Not for everyone, as they say...)
Today we will learn how to cook Turkish bureks. You will find a recipe with meat or minced meat in this article. We will also provide detailed instructions for preparing other types of bureks. After all, there are countless variations of this. It doesn’t even always look like a pie made from a snake-rolled dough sausage with filling. There is also a cigar-burek. This Turkish dish is often compared to Italian lasagna. The most difficult thing in making burek (it would be more correct to call the pie börek) is the dough. It's called "yufka". For some types of börek, filo dough is used. Since they are all very labor-intensive, Turkish housewives do not bother themselves much and buy the base for pies in stores. But sometimes they prepare the dough for börek themselves. We will tell you how to make a yufka. And for the lazy, we’ll reveal a secret: the dough can be replaced with thin Armenian lavash. But it is suitable only for some types of börek. For other varieties, you can use ready-made puff pastry.
Yufka
Let's start, of course, with the base, the dough, which forms the burek. The traditional Turkish recipe suggests preparing yufka from two glasses of flour, one hundred milliliters of water, two eggs, salt and a small amount of butter (you can spread it), which must first be melted. You need to be patient. Sift the flour into a deep bowl and make a depression at the top of the mound. Beat eggs in there, add water and salt. Add half a spoon of oil. Knead the dough thoroughly, sprinkle with flour and let stand for a quarter of an hour. Then roll it out into a layer two centimeters thick. Grease with 3 tablespoons of oil. We cut the layer into three parts, stack them on top of each other and roll out again. Grease again with 3 tablespoons of oil. Again, cut into three parts, which we stack one on top of the other. Knead for a few minutes and form into balls the size of a tennis ball. Roll out each one very thinly to make a circle sixty centimeters in diameter. Now you need to let the yufka dry a little.
Su börek
There is a type of dish that is very reminiscent of lasagna. It is called “water burek”. The Turkish recipe suggests making the dough for it according to the principle of lasagna. To do this, add four eggs and half a glass of salted water to 640 grams of sifted flour. Knead the elastic smooth dough, adding vegetable oil. We divide it into several parts. One of them must be larger than the others. Let the dough rest for half an hour under a towel. We roll out all the parts into very thin layers. Place the largest one in a mold greased with vegetable oil. The edges of the dough should extend significantly beyond the edges of this baking sheet or frying pan. Boil salted water in a saucepan and boil each layer for a minute. Dry on a towel. Due to the cooking process, such a dish, regardless of its filling, is called water börek.
Forming the cake
For example, let's make the simplest filling. Mash four hundred grams of Turkish cheese with a bunch of finely chopped parsley. If the cottage cheese is very dry, you can add a little natural yogurt. Now we form our burek with cheese and herbs. The culinary recipe instructs to grease a large sheet of dough (which is not boiled and is already covered in vegetable oil. We put half of the smaller layers on it. We also coat each with oil. We put half of the filling. We level it, sprinkle with oil. We place the remaining boiled layers of dough on top. We transfer each one with filling and grease with oil. Pick up the hanging edges of the large bottom layer, throwing them up. Grease the product with egg yolk and vegetable oil. Bake until golden brown over moderate heat.
Cigar-burek (Turkish dish): step-by-step recipe
The dish owes its name to its shape. This is not a pie, but tortillas rolled into the shape of a Cuban cigar. They are served as a snack with beer in Turkish bars. The classic filling for “cigars” is feta cheese with dill. This Turkish burek recipe suggests preparing it from stretched phyllo dough. But we will replace it with ready-made Armenian lavash. Let's prepare the filling. Mash cheese or 450 grams of salted cottage cheese with a fork. Add three yolks, a finely chopped bunch of dill, a clove or two chopped garlic. Beat the whites. Cut the pita bread into squares about ten centimeters long. Place a spoonful of filling on the edge of each piece. Roll up the “cigar”. Wet the outside of the square with whipped egg white so that the dough does not unfold. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the cigars until golden brown. Place on napkins to drain the oil.
Börek with spinach
The cigars are, of course, very original. But tourists who visited Turkey remembered more the snail-shaped pie. Having two layers of yufka, it is very easy to prepare such a burek at home. The Turkish recipe allows you to make this dish with a variety of fillings. The most popular are potato and spinach pies. Let's prepare the last variety. The filling is super easy to prepare. We chop four hundred grams of spinach and a large onion. Salt and season with black and red pepper to taste. grease with vegetable oil. Turn on the oven at 180°C. In a separate bowl, mix half a glass of water with four tablespoons of vegetable oil. This is necessary to soak the dough. Cut the yufka layer in half. Lubricate each part with impregnation. Place the filling around the edge. Roll the dough into a roll. Place it in a snail-shaped baking dish. We do the same with the second half. We fasten both parts using impregnation. Beat the yolk into the remaining oil water. Lubricate the top of the product with the mixture. If desired, you can sprinkle with seeds (cumin, sesame). Bake for about forty minutes.
Turkish bureki: recipe with meat
This dish can be made either in the form of a snail or as a covered pie. There is another option for the lazy: filling in pita bread. Knowing how to prepare yufka or having filo on hand (in Austria for strudel is called blatterteig), you might think that this Turkish dish is easy to prepare. The Muslim country's recipe for burek recommends making it from ground beef. Pork, firstly, is not halal, and secondly, it gives a lot of juice. But we don’t need it in a pie. First, heat two tablespoons of crushed walnut kernels in a dry frying pan. Let's put them on a plate. Then add oil and fry a finely chopped large onion. Add half a kilo of minced meat. Salt and pepper. Bring until the liquid is cooked and evaporated. Add a small bunch of parsley. Fry for another two minutes and stir in the nuts. Now we prepare the filling. Mix half a glass of natural yogurt and water, an egg and 70 ml of vegetable oil. Grease the mold with vegetable oil. Take three layers of yufka. Using a brush, lubricate them with filling. Place the layer in the mold. Sprinkle the filling on top. We add another layer. And again the filling. There should be dough on top. Break the egg into the remaining yogurt and grease the product. Place in a preheated oven. The burek will swell at first, but then settle.
Another way to shape a pie
You can do things differently with the yufka. Place three layers of dough at once into a greased baking dish. Naturally, they all must be well coated with filling. Place a third of the filling in the center. Cover it with the edges of the top layer. Then we lay out another third. Cover again with a middle layer of dough. Once again the filling and on top - the edges of the lower layer. Brush with a mixture of egg and yogurt. Let's bake.
With Chiken
Many people like classic Turkish burekas rolled with a snail. The chicken recipe allows you to give the pie this shape. This meat is somewhat dry, and the tubes will not spread. Prepare the filling from boiled chicken and parsley. Cut the puff pastry into long narrow strips. Place the filling in the middle. We pinch the dough. We roll the sausages into a snail shape in a baking dish lined with baking paper. The oven should be well heated to two hundred degrees. Bake for about half an hour. Turn off the oven and place a few small pieces of butter on the snail.
Filling recipes
What they don’t put in bereks! And spinach (both solo and with boiled chopped eggs), and minced meat, and leeks, and potatoes. As for the shape of the pie, here too we see variety. There is pouf-berek - crescent-shaped pies. They also prepare small portioned snails, “cigars”, and “pizzas”. But the classic Turkish burek with cheese remains popular among tourists. The recipe for its filling is simple. Mix the cheese with chopped herbs (dill, parsley). What do you think of this filling recipe? Mix equally white and yellow cheeses (feta and, for example, Dutch) - two hundred grams each. Add finely chopped dill and green onions. Squeeze two cloves of garlic. To make the mass a little viscous, add sour cream or yogurt.
