Mastering Turkish Rice: Tips from Our Kitchen

Turkish rice (şehriyeli pilav) – definitely one of the most famous dishes in Turkey!

If you’re familiar with Turkish food, you’ll know that rice features quite heavily in the eating process. A lot of Turkish recipes end with, ‘serve with rice’.

If you go to a lokanta (a type of Turkish restaurant), whichever dish you choose from the bain marie, it’s highly likely that you’ll be asked whether you would like a side serving of rice to go with it.

The rice is never on the same plate; pilav is a dish in itself and is served separately.

As soon as we moved to Turkey, we were keen to get our hands on an authentic Turkish rice recipe!

Tasty Fluffy Rice

Thankfully, Turkish rice is very tasty.

It’s rich and buttery and is indeed delicious on its own. Or with a good bowl of natural yoghurt on the side, too.

Whenever our friends come to Fethiye to visit us, they always say, ‘I can’t wait to have some Turkish rice’.

It’s a staple side serving in most restaurants. So it’s a dish holidaymakers become familiar with straight away.

One of our Turkish friends is an amazing cook (and loves to cook). But her husband says he’s happy just eating Turkish rice with yoghurt.

Whilst this makes her mad, it’s surely a good example of how rice is much-loved by many in Turkey. Even if it does drive our friend round the bend!

So, it was becoming increasingly difficult to live in Fethiye and not be able to produce a good bowl of Turkish rice for the table whenever we had friends round for dinner.

One night, when we were round at another friend’s house for food, we stood watch in the kitchen as she prepared different dishes.

We studied her method for how to make Turkish rice – the Turkish way!

Since that time we’ve followed and adapted her methods to make our own version of the recipe work for us.

This is now our tried and trusted method which gives us the best results.

Turkish Rice – About The Ingredients

Before moving to Turkey, we had no idea what şehriye was.

And, when we were in restaurants, eating meals, we always wondered what those ‘golden brown bits’ were in our servings.

Well, those ‘brown bits’ are orzo (şehriye) and are a type of pasta. As you can see in the photo below.

Some recipes will use vermicelli, instead. Both are quite common.

When you are sauteeing your orzo pasta (aka risoni), it’s important that you keep a close eye on it. Once it starts to brown, it can burn very quickly.

That will ruin the flavour of your pilav dish. If you are using vermicelli, it will brown quicker.

Add your rice immediately after you notice the change in colour and keep stirring with a wooden spoon.

Baldo Pirinç

If you are in Turkey and you want to make this recipe, there are different varieties and types of rice you can buy to suit different purposes.

The best type to buy for şehriyeli pilav is a rice with grains of medium length, called Baldo Rice (Baldo Pirinç).

Our Turkish Rice Recipe

This is a quicker version to the completely traditional method of making şehriyeli pilav.

It’s a method that works very well for us.

And, based on lots of feedback over the years, this recipe works for others, too.

This recipe makes enough pilav to serve as a side dish for four people.

Liquid To Rice Ratio

However much you decide to make, the easy thing to remember is you just use twice as much water as rice. If you do that, it should cook perfectly.

So, what about that traditional method we mentioned earlier?

Well, in Turkey, before cooking, people will rinse their rice thoroughly to get rid of all the starch so the rice doesn’t become sticky.

Some people will also soak their rice in warm water before cooking.

Adjust & Experiment

If you want to cook rice pilaf in this way, you will need to alter cooking times. You will also need to adjust the amount of water or stock you use.

We tend to use chicken stock (chicken broth), but you can use whatever you have to hand.

It won’t make too much difference to the overall taste of the finished dish.

It’s all down to experimenting, as you will see in some of the comments below.

Let’s make rice pilaf…

Now that you know how to make Turkish rice, why not get some ideas about all of the different sorts of Turkish dishes you can serve with it?

If for some reason you aren’t a huge fan of rice, then really good alternative Turkish side dishes you could serve up instead of this recipe include kısır, bulgur pilaf and green lentil salad.

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