Hi! Today I would like to introduce you to a
concept called börek. In Turkey, we have over 300 types of
different böreks; crunchy, soft, with multi layers,
single layer, baked, fried but all amazing and around these regions through
Balkans to Egypt to Armenia old up there
we have probably over a thousand different types of
böreks and it's really amazing all of them each different
and all amazing.
Isn't that amazing, today i would like to cook with you
one of my favorites it's called çi börek, it's crunchy outside,
soft inside and watery inside and it's great with cheese, great with meat
and i'm also going to make a vegan version of it. So,
three types of çi börek with Refika recipe and i made it so easy
so that everyone around the world can make it in their homes.
The name çi börek is pronounced two ways one is with a soft g chi (çiğ) and the other
one is çi. With the soft g one also means raw cause
the meat you put in it is raw but it's cooked so fast and it
gives all the delights to the pastry, the other one's name çi
comes from when it's sizzling on the pan the sound that it makes
resembles the çi; both names add up to something great.
Now, if we're ready, let's start çi börek.
First, we're going to prepare the dough
for the dough, i need 150 grams of plain flour, half a pack
half a tablespoon it also means of baking powder, teaspoon of salt
not a heap tablespoon straight and a tablespoon of yogurt and finally
a tablespoon of butter. This butter is quite melted because of the lights and
now here is really hot but if it's not
melted what you should do is put it on a pan turn on the pan for
5 seconds or 10 seconds and let it melt with that heat.
If you turn it on and the butter gets really heated
then your flour will meet with hot butter and it
is going to ruin the taste of the flour. It's going to make it a bit bitter and i
also added one third glass we have in Turkey and we
give measures with glasses also for everyone around world
that might be easier one third is about 75 milliliters of water
and i add it all in, then i mix it up. After the dough loses its stickiness, i'm
going to put my hands at work and knead it for about 2-3
minutes. I have a rather small dough like this
but from this we're going to have like four
big böreks like this to do that i'm going to
cut it into four we call that a beze excuse my english i sometimes forget. I
also want to show you to make this beze in a perfect shape, to
make it in a good shape, sometimes if the dough is not and it's really good
form, it doesn't get formed easily but to do
that you have to really press to make it into
a shape. I'm really now squeezing and the more
you squeeze you wake up the gluten and it makes actually
the dough stronger and then to make it round what you have
to do make your hand a dome and the right one
on the side and this gives the round shape and make it rounder and
perfect like this. Also, when i first began, I wasn't able to do
that easily, i would what i would do is i would first
knead it a bit as you can see it immediately gets stronger
and then what i would do i would like tuck it in
and become perfect. For the baking powder to start to work,
i'm going to let them sit for like two three minutes. If it's going to stay
longer, you have to cover them with a wet damp cloth.
Here i have 200 grams of ground beef and to that i'm going to add one and a
half onions and i'm going to grate them. There
was a comment i read this morning lady from London,
England, Mercourio.. something like that said that the Europeans don't know
grating as to use in the foods like they don't grate onions or
tomatoes, have you read that comment too? You're leaving great comments and please
continue to do so cause that's like as you know Turkey is not
going through good days, the world is not going through good days
and it's the light in our lives so for thousands of years we're grating in
some sense onions and tomatoes since they
came 150 years.
A little.
Actually not to cry so much, i kind of cheated; grated one onion beforehand
so that i cry less. So this is one and a half.
As you can see it's a lot of water but this
is almost more onions than ground beef but almost
in all the böreks that makes it great the sugar in the onion turns into a
caramelized incredible taste, it softens the meat
as you can see now it's reddish but it's going to turn into brown
and with my clean hand i'm going to add a pinch of salt,
pepper two pinches and that's almost it; even though as you've seen the
onions were really watery, i'm going to add one fifth of a
glass which is about 40 milliliters of more water.
Yeah it's a soaking mix. Now this is going to get into
those four and i'm going to heat up my oil. Now, i'm going to use olive oil
and it has to be around 2 centimeters in height kind of like deep frying
because it has to take almost half of the pastry
in. The most important thing, it shouldn't be higher than it's burning
degrees which is in this case about 200 degrees.
For example in Turkey we have hazelnut oil you can use
various kind of oils which you think is suitable for frying in which your budget
is okay with. Time to make the börek, i get my patty i
put it like this. I put a bit more flour and then i flour
my merdana, rolling pin if you don't have a
rolling pin, you can use a glass like this, the second
one i'm going to use this one, it's a bottle sorry.. Glass bottle. I don't
press on the dough like this, i just go back
and forth and then after a while it becomes an
ellipse and i turn it into 90 degrees and continue.
There's no flour on top, it's going to stick so
always more flour and that now it's like this round shape which is
my hands are almost 20 centimeters and rather thin like this.
I'm going to fold it, so that i'm going to put
the mince meat around this place, as you can see because of the onion how
the color has changed from that bright to rather brown but it
smells very delicious even now, because now
almost the onion cook the meat
This is Refika's kitchen
so grandma portions work here and they are
going to do this for the first time so i'm not sure i made the half but even
though if i didn't i'm going to like pull it a bit, thanks
for the gluten, and i'm going to press the sides like
this. This is really important because the air that we are
going to drag inside is going to heat up and then it's
going to make the börek a little bigger so
after i do that i put my finger like this and fold a little.
So one final check, all here and then this is going to get onto the oil.
Now i'm going to check whether it is hot and if there are bubbles;
yes there are bubbles, it's okay and very fast
once you make it shouldn't sit you have to put it in
and you have to put some oil on top to literally harden the dough but not too
much because then i would reduce the degrees
of the oil..
Now the hardest part is to turn without ruining the surface so
wait for a while until one side is really cooked
and second part will be great.
While taking out you also have to be careful
not to ruin any part, now i have this new belief
that when i do something fried, i don't take it to a paper towel
but something with holes when it first gets out of the fire,
if there's a thing that can let the oil drip
but also get the air at the bottom and first cool down a bit like that then
it's always crunchier but be careful it's now amazingly hot.
Normally, i would never use a knife for this but i wanted to show you the inside
very crunchy outside filled with goodness in the
soft dough inside and and inside the mincemeat smells heavenly
the onion does its miracles.
Usually we eat this with ayran again the one that we did with the rap; dürüm.
Thank you i had read a lot of comments about and i believe in India,
they make the different types of ayran actually better than us
but the sour and the plain one in Turkey is relatively better.
So if you ever visit and come from India don't say
like this is what we have in back in India and don't try,
you should definitely try it.. Bahar we're waiting for you,
please come and eat us..
That's even hotter..
Guys i remembered something and i believe it's very important
because like if you're not really a person of deep frying and i should say
i am not because i don't deep fry a lot it might be
a bit dangerous for this like big börek, so what you can do and i'm going to do
the vegetarian like that is to make the börek rather smaller so
like if this is one piece half it like that
and make your böreks from this, it's going to be easier to handle
and if there are more people around so more people can taste it.
Now when it comes to a vegetarian version of this, we need some kind of
cheese; it could be anything that can easily melt.
In Turkey, we use kashar, kashar is a version of kashkaval
or fetta cheese is known in most parts of the world but we have a slightly
different version of it and it's called beyaz peynir,
those would do good but for you, you can use mozzarella,
you can use a light cheddar, not a very heavy and aged one,
even a good light gouda will do so first grate the cheese like for each
portion we need about 40 grams and the opening of the dough is
exactly the same and then edit and fold it and make the
size really nice and then fry it and then eat it
immediately but watch out because when you cut it the cheese is going to
melt and elongate and don't hurt yourself,
it's really really amazing.
If we make this a vegan one what will happen
now for the first time i'm going to make a vegan version of it
and i really want to do this with you guys so probably the vegans are now
getting really used to, if i replace this with this one they have an idea but
i would like to share this for everyone so that if someone wants to do it vegan
or don't have the ingredient at home, they can replace it.
So for the flour to make it vegan, we have to replace the yogurt and the
butter. Instead of butter i'm going to use
coconut oil and instead of the yogurt yogurt have
two aspects the oil aspect and the acidity.
For the acidity, i'm going to use a teaspoon of vinegar
and for the oil i'm going to increase the coconut oil
slightly so one and a half tablespoons of oil.
the rest of making the dough is same salt,
water, flour, baking powder. For the inside, because we liked it with the minced meat,
i want something which will give the feeling of a minced meat and that's
going to be mushrooms and as we have seen onion made
miracles with the minced meat we're going to add a lot of onions in this
case as well for the meat's different kind of
taste we need a little bit of help for the
mushroom to go there and so then the garlic comes into the picture to
save the day. We toss all these ingredients with a bit
of salt and pepper and a bit of olive oil on the pan before
adding it into the börek but don't forget to cool
the filling before making it into a börek
otherwise, it won't be as crunchy as we want.
One last thing because i believe it's really really important is
oil is something very precious olive oil is even more precious.
So these frying oils are reusable at least four to five times,
you can use the oil again and again. First you have to
let it cool down and then filter it and put it on a jar, on a dark and cool place
in the kitchen and every time you use that it's going
to be economically better and plus after the oil is unusable you
can give it to a restaurant or something
because they would probably recycle it some people collect it even in Turkey
they do and it would be some kind of another energy as well. I
believe this is really important, if you weren't doing this before please
think about it. Now here comes the sun.
Come and taste it. So this is it.. You can smell the garlic, the onion; it
kind of gives the feeling of a samosa probably because of coconut oil used
tastes much lighter and very good.. Also green lentils could have been
really nice maybe one day we do something with the
green lentils, hope you like this video if you liked it please write a comment
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the wings and also please press your like and that's how
the word travels and people like you who would enjoy this video would be able
to see it. It's been less than five months in these times
your support, your enthusiasm changed me a lot;
there were some scars let's say i was trying to
cover most of the time about life, about some of the things i do and
your enthusiasm heal those scars thanks so much
really really love you and take care..