Name: Kısır (Bulgur Salad Worked with Pepper Paste)
Prep time: 45 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients: 250 g fine bulgur; 250 ml boiling water; 2 tbsp pepper paste (biber salçası); 1 tbsp tomato paste; 80 ml olive oil; 1 tsp salt; 0.5 tsp ground cumin; 1 bunch parsley; 6 spring onions; 1 cucumber; 1 tomato; 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 8 lettuce leaves

Ingredients

6servings

The bulgur
fine bulgur · fine (köftelik), not coarse250 g
boiling water250 ml
The paste
pepper paste (biber salçası) · or 3 tbsp tomato paste + 1 tsp paprika2 tbsp
tomato paste1 tbsp
olive oil80 ml
salt1 tsp
ground cumin0.5 tsp
Vegetables and finish
parsley · finely chopped1 bunch
spring onions6
cucumber · finely diced1
tomato · seeded, finely diced1
pomegranate molasses2 tbsp
lemon juice2 tbsp
lettuce leaves · to scoop with8

Steps

Pour boiling water over the fine bulgur 1:1, cover, and leave 20 minutes. It is not boiled — the wheat was boiled and dried already, and this only gives the water back.
⏲ 20 min
Fork it through. Squeezed in the hand it should hold together without any water running out.
⏲ 2 min
Add both pastes, the olive oil, salt and cumin and work it with your hands for five minutes. Not a spoon — rubbing it between your palms is what coats every grain and takes the colour in evenly.
⏲ 5 min
Keep going until it is an even orange and your hands are oily. That is the whole dish.
⏲ 2 min
Cool it completely, then fold in the parsley, spring onion, cucumber and tomato lightly. Working it now only pulls water out of the vegetables.
⏲ 3 min
Season with the pomegranate molasses and lemon. Half an hour at room temperature settles it.
⏲ 30 min
Serve with lettuce leaves — a spoonful in a leaf, folded, is the usual way to eat it.
⏲ 1 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Heat: biber salçası comes mild (tatlı) and hot (acı). Use the hot one and nothing else needs adjusting.
Without pomegranate molasses: put the lemon up to 3 tablespoons. The sourness is right; the molasses' sweetness and astringency are not replaced.
Summer version: double the cucumber and tomato and drop the bulgur to 200g.
Beside tabbouleh: both are bulgur salads with the proportions reversed. Tabbouleh is a herb salad in which parsley leads and a little bulgur joins; kısır is a grain salad in which the bulgur leads and the herbs join. Even the colour splits — green against orange.
As meze: on the table with tzatziki and çılbır.

Tips

Bulgur is not cooked, it is restored. Bulgur is wheat that has been boiled, dried and cracked, so there is nothing left to cook: twenty minutes under hot water is the whole of it. That is what tabbouleh is relying on when it says to use fine bulgur "lightly soaked" without saying why. Simmer it like rice and you get porridge (soaking).
The same class of ingredient as kama. That grain is roasted before milling, so it disperses into cold kefir; this one is boiled before drying, so it takes hot water. Both are grains cooked once before they are sold, and which first cooking it was decides how they are brought back.
Why the water is only 1:1. Bulgur takes up a fixed amount, and any excess occupies the space the paste is supposed to fill. Leave it wet and no amount of working will get the colour in; the seasoning sits on the outside.
It has to be done by hand. A spoon pushes the paste around in lumps. Rubbing between the palms spreads the stiff salça into a film on each grain, and the oil is what holds that film there. Five minutes feels long, and it is the only real work in the dish.
Vegetables go in cold. Added warm, the parsley wilts and the cucumber weeps into the bottom of the bowl. And from that point you are folding, not working it.
Do not refrigerate it. Cold olive oil goes cloudy and waxy and coats the mouth. ko.wikipedia notes it is normally eaten at room temperature; if it has been in the fridge, take it out half an hour before (serving temperature).

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

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Salad →

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