Döner has been living its golden years in the food world since 2010, and over that time a few details we tend to overlook have piled up in my head. I wanted to put them in one place:
- The döner you’ll come across most often is made from beef round and lamb flank. The reason is simple: round is inexpensive and easy to work with. You’ll rarely find döner made from ribeye, though there’s no rule against it. You’d just need someone mad enough to take on the cost!
- In Ankara, some places skip lamb meat altogether and use lamb tail fat instead. Others use no lamb at all and put far more weight on a milk marinade.
- Kastamonu döner is made entirely from lamb and, contrary to what people think, isn’t heavy at all.
- In Antalya, some döner makers use mutton instead of lamb when the season is right.
- The most unusual döner in Turkey is in Çorum: döner made from tripe!
- Meat cut for döner is best left to rest, which is to say, to marinate, for a long time. Milk and a handful of spices are a common way to flavor it. I’ve also come across cooks who add grape molasses, thyme oil and granulated onion.
- Onion can go into the marinade in the last 24 hours, in small amounts, and only the white part, grated and squeezed dry. If too much of its bite gets into the meat, it can spoil the flavor.
- A döner should never be small, say 10 kg; it cooks fast and dries out fast.
- I’ve tucked the most important point into the middle: the first cut is the juiciest, most intensely flavored part of a döner. As the döner starts to cook, the marinade seeping out hits the fire and dries onto the meat. What waits for you is a block of meat that’s crisp outside and incredibly moist inside! Every place has its own hour for the first cut.
- Never eat the last of the döner; it’s overcooked and can turn bitter.
- Döner can be cooked on a gas grill, over wood or over charcoal. Wood and charcoal, being more natural, add flavor, but from a health standpoint they’re more carcinogenic than gas.
- If you ask me, I prefer food cooked over wood or charcoal to a gas grill. A döner cooked over a natural fire is indescribably good. But I’m also a fan of minced-meat döner cooked on gas. My Istanbul lineup for the gas-fired kind:
- That said, many places you’d assume cook their döner over wood or charcoal are high-volume spots, and because wood and charcoal give off less heat than gas, they feed the fire with natural gas from below, the side or behind to make it burn hotter. Among Istanbul’s big-name döner shops, I’d say 9 out of 10 boost their wood or charcoal with gas. It’s an observation. I’m not calling it a flaw. Just observing.
- A word on the cooking itself: döner shouldn’t cook slowly, or it loses its juices. Over a roaring fire, though, you end up eating something charred outside and still pink inside.
So when you go to popular döner shops like Bayramoğlu, Tatar Salim or Ali Usta, ask about the story of the döner you’re eating. Let your eye wander to the döner counter… You’ll see what I mean.
