Lahmacun (Turkish spiced-meat flatbread)
55 min · 36 g protein · 469 cals / serving
Paper-thin flatbreads baked crisp at the edges under a thin layer of spiced beef, tomato, red pepper and parsley with a little chilli heat. Straight from the oven you squeeze lemon over each one, pile on parsley, sumac onion and crisp lettuce, roll it up and eat it with your hands, the way they do in every kebab shop in Turkey.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little for rolling
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup water, lukewarm
- 1 tsp olive oil
Topping
- 14 oz ground beef (95% lean)
- 2 1/2 oz ground lamb, or more beef
- 1 small onion, roughly chopped
- 1 red bell pepper, roughly chopped
- 1 large tomato, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2/3 cup fresh parsley
- 2 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes, Aleppo or Urfa pepper if you have it
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 3/4 tsp salt
To roll up
- 1 cup fresh parsley, leaves
- 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 1 tsp sumac
- 2 hearts romaine lettuce, shredded
- 2 medium tomatoes, sliced
- 1 large cucumber, in sticks
- 2 tbsp lemon juice, lemon wedges
Steps
- Mix the flour, yeast and salt, then add the warm water and oil and knead 5 minutes into a soft, smooth dough. Cover and leave 45–60 minutes until doubled.
- Meanwhile, blitz the onion, red pepper, tomato, garlic and parsley in a food processor to a coarse paste. Tip it into a sieve and press out as much juice as you can, so the topping does not make the bread soggy. Return it to the processor with the tomato paste, beef, lamb, paprika, chilli, cumin and salt and pulse until evenly mixed into a soft, spreadable topping.
- Heat the oven to its highest setting, 480°F or more, with two baking sheets inside. Divide the dough into 8 balls and roll each very thin on a floured surface, into a round about 10 inch across.
- Toss the sliced red onion with the sumac and a pinch of salt and set aside.
- Slide 1–2 rounds onto parchment, spread each thinly with an eighth of the topping right to the edges and bake on a hot sheet 6–8 minutes, until the edges are crisp and the meat is cooked through (160°F). Serve each one hot with parsley, sumac onion, lettuce, tomato, cucumber and lemon to squeeze over, then roll up.
Good to know
The topping looks thin. Is that right?
Yes. Lahmacun is a thin flatbread with a smear of meat, not a pizza piled high. Spread it to the very edge and it cooks in the time the bread takes to crisp.
Short on time?
Use 8 large, thin store-bought tortillas or flatbreads instead of the dough and bake 5–6 minutes. It is not quite the same chew, but it is very good.
Can I freeze them?
Bake, cool and freeze them flat between sheets of parchment. Reheat straight from frozen in a hot oven for 4–5 minutes.
Per
- Calories
- 99
- Protein
- (31%)
- 7 g
- Fat
- (22%)
- 2 g
- Carbohydrates
- (47%)
- 12 g
- of which sugar
- 2 g
- Fiber
- 2 g
- Sodium
- 162 mg
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Computed from the ingredients with our published formula, not yet kitchen-tested. General guidance, not medical advice. Talk to your prescriber. How
As written, 1878 kcal goes into the pot and 2318 g of ingredients comes out as about 1900 g of food: 99 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water and energy density is the score's biggest lever, so the dish is scored as cooked, not as an average of its parts. Every ingredient links to its food page, with the same data and score. The label's percentages are each macronutrient's share of the calories. The full formula.