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Dondurma: The Turkish ice cream eaten with a knife and fork
- DiscourseFan 2y agoWait this is just regular Turkish ice cream. Normally for tourists (and outside Turkey) they serve it in a cone. I've never actually had it on a plate.
- faizmokh 2y agoI think they'll serve it on a plate if you order it in restaurants.
- selcuka 2y agoOnly "Maraş" (a city in Turkey) ice cream will sometimes be served on a plate. Regular ice cream is still served in a cone or a cup.
- utdemir 2y agoTurkish here. It's hard to believe, but there are different kinds of ice cream in Turkey. The average ice-cream ("dondurma" in Turkish) you'd get in Turkey is the one you expect: sorbet or gelato, usually in a cone. It's what you'd get when you ask for an ice-cream at a random place. The one described in this post is a specific kind of ice-cream we call "ice-cream from Maraş" ("Maraş dondurması" in Turkish). Which is great - but the post makes it sound like it is "the Turkish ice-cream" which is a bit misleading. You don't find it everywhere.
- DiscourseFan 2y agoThanks for the clarification. Now I want to see if I can get it somewhere nearby.
- Aloisius 2y agoThe ingredient that makes the ice cream stretchy, salep, can't be purchased readily outside of Turkey. Supposedly, konjac flour which like salep is also rich in glucomannan, can be used as a substitute to make something very similar. There are some other recipes floating around that uses gellan gum or guar gum as well.
- treflop 2y agoCan't you buy salep online?
- can16358p 2y agoIt's very hard to buy genuine salep even in Turkey. Whatever is sold as "salep" everywhere is just some sugar powder perhaps just a little with actual salep as 100% salep is extremely expensive. If you find it, that will very likely be fake and would have nothing to do with actual salep.
- Semaphor 2y agoI make my own (low-carb) ice cream, and the mix of inulin and konjac flour does remind me a bit (not trying to emulate it, so it’s really only a bit) of the stretchy Turkish ice cream I've had at fairs.
- nattura 2y agoSalep comes from the bulbs of wild orchids. Those wild orchids cannot be cultivated and they are illegally foraged from the wild. Currently the production of salep is not sustainable. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/orchids-salep https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/orchids-salep https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/dining/salep.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/dining/salep.html
- bashmelek 2y agoIt’s very unfortunate, and it causes species native to Türkiye to disappear. A lot of the salep you might find shopping is a salep mix, meant to make the drink salep, and is mostly sugar. The history of the salep drink is itself fascinating. A hot salep-based drink was for a while wifely popular in England, but then fell out of favor when it became associated with being a medicine for venereal disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salep
- nattura 2y agoOrchids have been consumed since ancient times, in Ancient Greece and probably even earlier. The name orchid comes from Greek, from orchis (testicles). Each plant has two bulbs, hence the name, and it was considered in ancient times a strong aphrodisiac. These species of orchids can be found throughout the Mediterranean, and all the way to Iran. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18255-7_2 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18255-7_...
- corsac 2y agoIt always piques my interest when I hear of something economically valuable that "cannot be cultivated", as in, I wonder how much "cannot" means "not enough tinkering has been put in to figure out how to cultivate it in a cost-effective manner" as opposed to "impossible". I remember talking to a wasabi farmer in Oregon who claimed to have been one of the first to grow a crop "that can't be cultivated outside Japan" outside Japan. It seems doubly worthwhile to experiment with in this case since it would both keep a food tradition viable and protect the orchid species from disappearing. When I google Orchis mascula I do find info about cultivation (though cultivation on a commercial scale might be a different matter).
- can16358p 2y agoDondurma literally means "ice cream" and it's just like regular ice cream like the rest of the world: served with a cone with scoops of it. So the word "dondurma" doesn't directly translate to the particular kind in question, it just translates to regular ice cream. The ice cream in question is a special traditional form of it from a particular area. In rest of Turkey, dondurma (ice cream) is just like rest of the world, not like this. This one is lovely though, I'd recommend it especially for the texture.
- spondylosaurus 2y agoDoes it have a chewy texture? I'm imagining something like fresh mochi.
- can16358p 2y agoYup, the "maraş dondurma" in question has a particularly chewy texture to it and generally extends in a sticky way when trying to eat with a fork.
- levanten 2y agoit has a thick texture but it is not as chewy as mochi. on the other hand it is very pliable and has a distinct taste both due to use of salep.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Dondurma literally means "ice cream" and it's just like regular ice cream like the rest of the world: served with a cone with scoops of it. So the word "dondurma" doesn't directly translate to the particular kind in question, it just translates to regular ice cream. This is true generally of most foreign terms. Americans believe "gelato" is supposed to be something different from ordinary "ice cream". Of course it's the Italian word for "ice cream".
- zamfi 2y agoSure, but also Italians make ice cream somewhat differently than Americans (at least, different proportions of the ingredients are more widespread). "Gelato" can be both the Italian word for "ice cream" and be something different from what is typically referred to as "ice cream" in the US, no?
- Nux 2y agoHoly Baader–Meinhof, just had this 2 days ago (not in Turkey), now it's on HN..
- perilunar 2y agoIf you are in Sydney, try Hakiki on Enmore Road Newtown. http://www.hakiki.com.au http://www.hakiki.com.au
- yumraj 2y agoSlightly off topic, but curious, is “Turkish” still spelled like that after Turkey’s name change to Türkiye?
- stavros 2y agoTürkiyesh?
- teractiveodular 2y agoTürkçe
- tugberkk 2y agoStill turkish.
- shafyy 2y agoThe Maras Dondurma sellers in the stalls also like to mess around, especially with kids and put on a show. For example, the give you the ice cream in two cones (stacked on top of each other), and then pull up their big spoon (see one of the pics in the article). Because the ice cream is sticky, it pulls the upper cone with it, and you're left holding an empty cone.