Oven Baked Courgette Fritters Recipe – Kabak Mücveri

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Here’s a recipe title for you: Fırında Patatesli Kabak Mücveri. That’s what we’re making in this article.

It’s a take on a classic dish of Turkish cuisine and translates to ‘oven baked potato and courgette fritters‘ recipe (or oven baked potato and zucchini fritters for our American readers).

As far as we’re concerned, the reward for your efforts far exceeds the few minutes you’re going to spend grating, chopping and mixing.

This Turkish oven baked potato and courgette fritters recipe is much-loved in our house and makes a great side dish or even main meal.

How To Make Fırında Kabak Mücveri – Oven Baked Potato And Courgette Fritters

So, we said it was our take on a classic Turkish dish…

That’s because, as you’ve probably noticed in the title, fritters are usually fried in hot oil.

That is the most common version of Turkish mücver.

Kabak mücver (Turkish courgette fritters / zucchini fritters) is a popular dish, often to be seen on the Turkish meze table.

After first seeing an oven baked version some years ago, it is one we’ve played around with over the years, adding extras here and there.

It’s also slightly easier on the oil, and, if we’re being honest, a bit of a lazier (but easier) version than the original recipe.

Rather than frying in batches, once you’ve done your mixture, it goes into an oven dish and disappears off into the preheated oven for a while.

If you’re looking for great vegetable dishes and are cooking for visiting friends, this means it’s one of those easy meals where you get lots of food for little effort.

And you can be getting on with preparing other Turkish recipes for them whilst it cooks.

Great party food! Happy days!

The Main Ingredients

To make oven baked potato and courgette fritters, it all starts off with with a good grater and a large mixing bowl.

After chopping the ends off two large courgettes, they’re grated into the large bowl. Now, you can peel and wash a medium-sized potato and grate that in, too.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to keep this recipe light, you don’t need to use the potato.

Just substitute it for one more courgette, instead.

Keep hold of that grater and peel and grate two large carrots into the mixture, too. The carrots add a lovely bit of sweetness.

Time To Get Chopping

Now you need your chopping knife and chopping board.

Your Turkish oven baked potato and courgette fritters recipe needs some fresh herbs and spices going on.

And a staple; onion. We’re peeling and finely chopping one medium-sized onion and adding that to the grated ingredients.

If you prefer, you can use finely chopped spring onions instead for an extra bit of greenery and milder flavour.

At this stage, just press all those ingredients down with a kitchen towel (or kitchen paper) to soak up as much liquid as you can and then discard the paper.

Now for the remaining ingredients; the herby spicy bit. We need half a bunch of parsley, finely chopped and added to the mixture.

Then we’re doing the same with half a bunch of fresh dill.

We usually find dill really strong and overpowering but this recipe for oven baked potato and courgette fritters can handle it.

Now it’s time for a generous sprinkling of dried mint (we prefer dried to fresh mint for our mücver recipe) and, if you like a bit of heat to your dishes, the same again with pul biber (hot red pepper flakes or chilli flakes).

A pinch of salt and ground black pepper and that’s Part One done.

Time To Blend

Time to get gooey and messy now. This fırında patatesli kabak mücver recipe needs the blend that is going to hold all your ingredients together.

We’re talking large eggs, olive oil or sunflower oil (we prefer olive oil), flour and a touch of baking powder just for a bit of a lift.

We beat four eggs and stir that into the courgette / zucchini mixture.

Then we sieve one and a half cups of plain flour into the bowl along with the baking powder.

This is one of our regular coffee cups that we use for lots of our recipes. In total, you need approximately 225 grams of flour.

Mix this well until you can’t see any flour remnants. And then you add in your olive oil – just less than half of the same cup. Approximately 75 millilitres.

And now we’re good to go…

Time To Bake Our Potato And Courgette Fritters

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (around 350 degrees Fahrenheit) and meanwhile, liberally grease a baking tray or bowl of your choice.

We use a large circular tray around 30 centimetres (11.8 inches) in diameter or our square oven tray for our recipe.

Pour your mixture into your tray and spread it around so that it’s roughly even in thickness in all places.

Mmmm, and now it’s oven time – that time where your kitchen fills with the aromas of home cooking and you can’t wait for your dish to be ready.

If you’re like us and have a glass oven door, you can even watch – slightly impatiently – as your mixture sits in its tray in the centre of your oven and starts to set and turn golden brown on top.

From sloppy, gooey mixture to Turkish oven baked potato and courgette fritters in around 40 minutes.

Now for your next challenge…

Removing it from the oven and leaving it there, looking at you from your kitchen counter, tempting you to eat it!

But please do your best to let it cool down to room temperature.

Once your potato and courgette fritters have cooled a little, you can cut it all up however you like.

If we’re cooking for friends, we’ll cut it into lots of smaller squares.

If we make these Turkish courgette fritters just for ourselves, obviously, we eat it over a few days. It will keep in the fridge for around 3 days in an airtight container.

It’s great as a cold snack or as a main meal with a simple leafy salad and Turkish yoghurt on the side.

Oven Baked Potato And Courgette Fritters Recipe

Afiyet Olsun!

Oven Baked Potato & Courgette Fritters – Further Info

• If you want individual courgette or zucchini fritters, you can pour your mixture into muffin tins, like we do for our a la Turka version of egg muffins. Just be aware that these will be deeper so you’ll need to bake for slightly longer to be sure they’re set all the way through.
• If you are skipping the potato and opting for another courgette instead, you could also add a small handful of crumbled beyaz peynir (Turkish white cheese or feta cheese) for extra flavour.
• Oven baked potato and courgette fritters are great for serving as nibbles when cooking for friends and they’re also perfect for taking on picnics, too, or snacking on when you’re trekking.
• We often eat our oven baked mücver as a lunch with a side of tomato salad and mücver’s traditional accompaniment, suzme yoghurt. Either leave the yoghurt plain make up some other meze dishes such as traditional cacık or classic haydari and chilli yoghurt.

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