İskender Kebab: Bursa's Greatest Contribution to Food
Doner meat over pide bread, drenched in tomato sauce and browned butter, with cold yoghurt on the side. The contrast between the hot butter, the bread soaking up sauce, and the cold yoghurt is what makes it work. This recipe uses thinly sliced lamb or beef as a home version of the doner.
Ingredients
Meat
500g thinly sliced lamb or beef (or good quality doner meat)
1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp paprika, salt, pepper
2 tbsp oil
Tomato Sauce
400g crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp butter, 1 tsp red pepper flakes
Salt to taste
To Serve
4 thick pide bread slices (or flatbread), cut into cubes
80g butter (for browning)
300g cold full-fat yoghurt
Roasted tomato and peppers on the side
Method
Season meat, cook over very high heat in a pan. You want char on the edges. Set aside.
Make the tomato sauce: melt butter, add crushed tomatoes and pepper flakes, simmer 15 minutes until thickened. Season well.
Toast the pide cubes in the oven at 180°C until golden and starting to crisp on the edges. They'll soften under the sauce.
Plate: pide cubes first, meat over them, ladle hot tomato sauce generously over everything.
Brown the butter in a separate small pan until it smells nutty and turns golden. Pour immediately over the plate at the table.
Add cold yoghurt on the side. Do not mix it in, the temperature contrast is the point.
Notes
The browned butter is not optional. It's what makes İskender İskender. Do it right before serving, it needs to hit the plate sizzling. If you can find real pide bread, use it. The bread should absorb the sauce but not turn to mush; that's why toasting it first matters.
A Short History
İskender kebab is named after İskender Efendi, a cook credited with inventing the dish in Bursa in the late 19th century, making it one of the few Turkish dishes with a specific, documented inventor and origin story rather than a shared regional folk history. The combination of doner meat over bread with tomato sauce, browned butter, and yogurt is still specifically associated with Bursa, and the city treats it as a point of culinary pride.
Nutrition (per serving)
1022
Calories
51g
Protein
59g
Fat
71g
Carbs
Estimated from standard ingredient nutrition data for this recipe as written, serves 4. This is genuinely one of the richer dishes on this site, the browned butter and full-fat yoghurt on top of meat and bread add up fast, and that richness is the actual point of the dish, not an oversight.
