Ottoman Cuisine

Ottomans, during their time, have created the world’s primary cuisine by combining food culture from Central Asia to Caucasus to Mesopotamia and Arabian Peninsula with the food culture of Anatolia. Ottomans placed emphasis on food culture, by combining selective food varieties of the regions they took under their control in the palace kitchen, created very rich variety and under the supervision of the chief taster and the chief doctor, by paying a lot of attention to health and taste, these flavors were spread across within the country.

Palace kitchen was an active kitchen. We see that it was like a school. More so, people brought from different areas of Bolu were educated and the concepts of current assistant, apprentice, foreman and master have been brought to these days. Ottoman cuisine is a cuisine open to innovations, although some products have been brought from outside and grown in our country, it has come forth in world cuisine with its flavor and taste.

Flavors consisting of each season’s fresh vegetables, meat, baked goods and various spices and fruits were presented by the ottoman cuisine in their best form. Today, what we call Turkish cuisine is developing our cuisine even more and maintaining the same concept.

In the last years, Turkish cuisine went into stagnant stage with expansion of fast food and economic conditions getting more difficult. Currently, it is also understood in our country that fast food type dishes are unhealthy and return to our main cuisine began. We are saying, “Let’s all together keep Turkish cuisine alive so we can contribute to tourism and direct ourselves to healthy eating.”