Vegetable Güveç Recipe – Flavours Of The Season

For this Turkish recipe, we’re going to be adding to our list of Turkish vegetarian and vegan recipes with a tasty vegetable güveç.

As you no doubt know by now, we love to eat seasonally.

If you’ve been to Turkey before, there’s a strong chance you’ve ordered a güveç – aka the Turkish casserole – when you’ve been in a Turkish restaurant.

We love this famous Turkish dish. As do many of our readers who voted it amongst their favourite dishes of traditional Turkish cuisine.

For me, even in the height of summer, I can still happily polish off the steaming contents of the clay pot.

Making Vegetable Güveç

This vegetable güveç recipe (Turkish name; sebzeli güveç) has been requested by a few different readers.

It’s an easy recipe, so we decided to make it for lunch recently.

At this time of year, we have a fridge and cupboard brimming with spring vegetables. And this recipe is the perfect way to make use of some of them.

The Vegetables

So, which variety of vegetables are we going to be using for our Turkish güveç recipe?

There are no hard and fast rules as to which vegetables you can use for your vegetable güveç.

Our recipe varies depending on the season.

Well, why not make the most of the vegetables that are at their best at that time of year?

So, we have a main ingredient that is going to be the star of the show, with the rest of the vegetables as the supporting act.

In some years, part of that supporting act for our springtime vegetable güveç would be green beans.

Unfortunately, they’re currently expensive to buy, compared to other seasonal treats, so we’re giving those a miss for now.

We’re very much looking forward to green beans in olive oil once the beans reach a more sensible price!

But, back to our ingredients:

• Aubergines: Aubergines are going to be our main ingredient. On the local markets at this time of year, they’re really small and meaty and wonderfully tasty.
• Cooked baby new potatoes: Not in the photo above. But we add a handful of cooked baby new potatoes to the vegetarian güveç. They’re in season and they make for a more substantial casserole. Buy a few and use the rest to make a Turkish potato salad.
• Mushrooms: We’re using chestnut mushrooms. But in autumn and winter, we would use seasonal Saffron Milk Caps.
• Green peppers and red peppers: Because you just can’t have a Turkish vegetable güveç without peppers!
• Tomatoes: We’re using vine tomatoes because they’re in season. The diced tomatoes will be used to make a light tomato sauce. We’re also keeping one back as a decorative cooked garnish.
• Chopped onions and garlic: Our vegetable güveç recipe is going to make two individual casseroles so we’re using one medium onion for each pot. And we can’t not have garlic!

The Rest Of Our Vegetable Güveç Ingredients

As we’ve said before on this blog, translating güveç as ‘casserole’ is a bit misleading because a güveç is actually a traditional earthenware pot.

How ‘caserrole-ish’ you want to make your ingredients inside that earthenware casserole pot is up to you.

Your vegetable güveç can be like a vegetable stew with lots of sauce. Or you can have just a little.

In the past, we’ve made a sucuk güveç in a deep clay pot that more resembles a traditional casserole.

For this vegetable güveç recipe, we’re going to let the main ingredients do the talking in a shallow dish. And accentuate them with some traditional güveç extras.

As well as some dried herbs and spices (just a few hot red pepper flakes for this particular recipe).

We’ll also use a generous amount of olive oil and a half cup of water (or vegetable stock) with some tomato paste (or red pepper paste) stirred into it.

Time To Cook The Vegetable Güveç

Our vegetable güveç is going to start out life in a frying pan rather than the individual casserole dishes.

Whilst our oven is getting to a nice high heat, we need to get the vegetables sizzling in the frying pan.

We’re starting off with our olive oil, onions, peppers and a good seasoning of salt and black pepper.

Get them all cooking over a medium heat.

As our onions start to sweat and go translucent, we add our small pieces of aubergine for a couple of minutes first, before adding the mushrooms.

We’re not aiming to cook the vegetables through with this first part of the process.

We just want them to begin to soften and take on the olive oil and flavourings.

So, after your mushrooms have been cooking for a couple of minutes, we add our roughly chopped tomatoes, herbs and spices.

Our recipe for vegetable güveç uses crushed coriander seeds, crushed cumin seeds, paprika, chilli flakes and dried thyme (kekik) and dried rosemary.

Time For The Oven

Once all our herbs and spices are stirred in, we’re going to add our cooked new potatoes, before removing the mixture from the heat.

We divide vegetables between two shallow güveç dishes. Then dissolve the tomato paste in a half cup of hot water and pour over both mixtures.

If you want more liquid in your casserole, feel free to make up more water and tomato paste / red pepper paste mixture.

Place your vegetable güveç bowls in the centre of the hot oven. And 20 minutes later, you will have two hot, bubbling servings of traditional Turkish vegetable güveç.

Vegetable Güveç – No Cheese

If you’re anything like Barry, you won’t want cheese over the top of your vegetable casserole.

Of course, this makes for a more healthy meal. You’ve essentially got yourself a healthy vegan stew.

However, if you’ve enjoyed güveç dishes when on holiday along Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coast, chances are they have been generously topped with cheese!

For many, the melted cheese is the best part!

I love a generous sprinkling of cheese over the top of a shallow dish vegetable güveç!

If you’re the same, then sprinkle grated cheese over the top of your vegetables 5 minutes before the end of cooking.

We use Turkish kaşar cheese but any cheese that melts easily, like Cheddar cheese, will do the trick.

Vegetable Güveç Recipe – FAQs

Our Recipe For Turkish Vegetable Güveç

Let’s get cooking. Here’s our full list of ingredients and step by step guide for how to make vegetable güveç.

Enjoy your seasonal vegetable güveç on its own or with side dishes.

And, if you want to make this main meal even more traditionally Turkish, you can add a side salad such as shepherd salad to the table, too.

You can find our vegetable güveç and other similar dishes in the Casseroles and Stews section of our list of Turkish recipes.

Afiyet Olsun!

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