İskender kebap

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İskender kebap with yogurt

İskender kebap is one of the most famous meat foods of Northwestern Turkey and takes its name from its inventor, İskender Efendi, who lived in Bursa in the late 19th century.

It is a kind of döner kebab prepared from thinly cut grilled lamb basted with tomato sauce over pieces of pita bread and generously slathered with melted butter and yogurt. Additionally, one cylindrical meatball is put over the sheets. It is commonly consumed with şıra as a drink to aid digestion. In order to have an interesting serve, tomato sauce and boiling butter is poured just at the table.

Unlike other traditional dishes of Turkish cuisine, İskender Kebap is a trademark of İskender İskenderoğlu, a member of the İskender family, who still run the restaurant in Bursa. Still, this dish is available in many restaurants throughout the country sometimes under the name Bursa Kebab, or a name that the serving restaurant made up (like "Uludağ Kebap" or "Kukla Kebap", both in Ankara).

[edit] Differences from döner kebab

A serving of İskender kebap contains thin and wide sheets of meat, on the other hand döner kebap has smaller pieces of meat. In order to cut large slices, Iskender is prepared from ground meat, that's why the meat sheets seem to have been cut from a large sausage. The fat content of Iskender meat is lower than that of döner meat.

Since the quality of meat in İskender kebap is better than that of döner, restaurants serving İskender are more expensive places, as serving İskender is more waiter-intensive.

It is also the first ever vertical kebab, making it also the first ever proper döner kebab.