Meals · Pasta & noodle bakes

Turkish pasta

Name: Turkish pasta
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 500 g cooked pasta, about 250 g dry; 400 g 90% lean ground beef; 1 onion yellow onions, finely chopped; 3 cloves garlic, minced; 2 tsp ground cumin; 2 tsp paprika; 3/4 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 1 1/2 cups whole-milk Greek yogurt; 2 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste; 2 tbsp butter; 1 1/2 tsp paprika; 1 tsp red pepper flakes; a handful fresh mint, torn; a handful fresh parsley, chopped

Spiced beef over pasta under a cold slick of garlicky yogurt, with paprika butter poured over the top. It went round the world in 2025 because it looks dramatic and takes half an hour — and the yogurt that makes it distinctive is also what keeps it filling.

Time: 30 min (10 prep + 20 cook)
Servings: 4
Per serving: 528 kcal
Protein: 36 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

500 g cooked pasta, about 250 g dry500 g

Beef

400 g 90% lean ground beef400 g
1 onion yellow onions, finely chopped120 g
3 cloves garlic, minced9 g
2 tsp ground cumin4 g
2 tsp paprika4 g
3/4 tsp salt4 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g

Garlic yogurt

1 1/2 cups whole-milk Greek yogurt350 g
2 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste6 g

Paprika butter

2 tbsp butter25 g
1 1/2 tsp paprika3 g
1 tsp red pepper flakes2 g

To serve

a handful fresh mint, torn5 g
a handful fresh parsley, chopped8 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Cook the pasta and drain it. Meanwhile stir the crushed garlic into the yogurt with a pinch of salt and leave it on the counter — cold yogurt straight from the fridge seizes against hot pasta.
Brown the beef with the onion over medium-high heat, 8–10 minutes, breaking it up as it cooks. Add the minced garlic, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper and cook another minute.
Melt the butter in a small pan until it foams, take it off the heat, and stir in the paprika and pepper flakes. It should sizzle and go deep red, not brown.
Build it: pasta, then the garlic yogurt in a thick layer, then the beef, then the paprika butter poured over. Scatter mint and parsley and serve straight away.

Won't the yogurt split?

Not the way it's used here — it goes on cold as a sauce, not into a simmering pan. Room temperature is the one thing that matters; fridge-cold yogurt against hot pasta turns grainy.

Why this score

moderately filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

28% of kcal

68% water

8 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2112 kcal goes into the pot, 1441 g of ingredients comes out as ~1320 g of food → 160 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 160
Protein: (28%); 11 g
Fat: (36%); 6 g
Carbohydrates: (37%); 15 g
of which sugar: 2 g
Fiber: 1 g
Sodium: 210 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.