Tarhana Dough Recipe | Turkish Style Cooking (2024)

I think tarhana soup is indispensable for the winter, at least for me. It is my favorite soup on cold winter days. While I used to use my mother's tarhana, I started making it myself for 2 years with my mother's recipe. You're a little intimidated from the start, but once you start doing it, you say it wasn't that hard. Not to mention the delicious tarhana smell that spreads throughout the house during the production process.

Since Turkey is located in a geography that is the meeting point of many different cultures, it has gathered different food cultures under the same roof. For this reason, food varieties vary greatly from region to region. However, we rarely have medium, unchanging dishes. One of them is tarhana. The way it is made, the materials that go into it, etc. Although it is different, tarhana is tarhana after all. Some make it with chickpeas, some with cranberries, some with tomatoes, some dry it in powder, some dry it in pieces. I don't know if there is any study done on this subject. But I believe that if a statistic is made, there will be more than a hundred different types of tarhana.

For example, the tarhana pepper that I made is more intense. You get the taste and smell of pepper when you eat it. It can be understood from the color that the pepper is intense. Even when making tarhana soup, ground pepper is roasted beforehand to support this taste. Even though my taste buds have gotten used to it since childhood, I think this is the most delicious form.

Things to Consider While Making Tarhana!!!

This year, I had the opportunity to talk to many people about tarhana, as I shared the step-by-step preparation stages of tarhana in the application. I would like to say a few words on things to keep in mind over these.

What Should I Do To Make Tarhana More Nutritious?

Many people think that tarhana is more nutritious when you put too many different ingredients in it. Tarhana made with more ingredients may have a different flavor, but unfortunately it is not possible to say that it is healthier. Tarhana is a fermented food and what makes tarhana healthy is the probiotic bacteria and various vitamins that appear during and through fermentation. The fermentation process destroys the physical structure of the foods used, as well as the nutrients they contain. In other words, when we think only in terms of health, it is more important whether you manage the fermentation process well than which vegetable you put in the tarhana. If you want to get more vitamins from tarhana soup, you can make soups such as chicken tarhana soup or vegetable tarhana soup by putting various ingredients into the it while making tarhana soup will bring you closer to your goal, not in tarhana dough. All you need to do is to use a natural yeast (tarhana or sour yeast), feed and knead the tarhana every day, and keep it at the appropriate temperature and away from the sun during the fermentation process to ensure that there are plenty of probiotics and vitamins in tarhana.

Is Tarhana Dry in the Oven?

Another and much more important point that I would like to underline is the drying stage of tarhana. I got questions from several people about whether tarhana can be dried in the oven. As I mentioned above, tarhana is a probiotic-rich food and probiotics are unfortunately not heat resistant. Therefore, drying tarhana in the oven, especially at high temperatures, means you are doing yourself a disservice. The most suitable drying places for tarhana are at home or in the open areas that are exposed to the sun from time to time but not exposed to the sun for a long time.

Why Does My Tarhana Color Become White?

The ingredient that gives tarhana its orange color is red pepper. The more red pepper, the more vibrant orange the color will be. It is flour that gives tarhana its white color. The more flour, the whiter its color. The thing that causes the amount of flour to be too much is to use watery materials that lift a lot of flour. Yogurt and tomato are the leading ones. Tarhana, which has a lot of yogurt and tomatoes, is very floury and therefore white.

What Should I Do To Make Tarhana Sour?

What makes tarhana sour is the fermentation process. Tarhana reaches its maximum sourness in 8-9 days. After that, tarhana, which cannot be fermented anymore, will lose its sourness as it is kept. This is the reason why tarhana, which is kept for 21 days, is called sweet tarhana. Actually, tarhana is not sweet, just not sour.

By the way, the sourness mentioned is not a sourness like lemon sour. Tarhana has a pleasant sourness similar to sourdough bread sourness and is not bothersome even at its highest level. However, after reaching the maximum level, keeping it for a few more days and dulling its sharpness will increase its flavor. For this reason, the ideal waiting time for a slightly sour, fragrant and aromatic tarhana is between 10-12 days. You can decide this time by looking at the consistency and reaction of the tarhana dough. When your tarhana stops rising, it means it has reached its maximum level. After that, it will be enough to wait a few more days.

Enjoy the recipe...

Bon appetit...