Kayseri Cure · Spiced Air-Dried Beef
Pastırma
Photo: E4024 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Pastırma is widely considered an ancestor of pastrami: the cured meat spread through the Balkans to Romania as pastramă, and Romanian Jewish immigrants brought it to New York, where it became the deli meat.
Beef is salted, pressed under weights to remove moisture, then coated in a thick paste of fenugreek, garlic, and hot paprika called çemen before air-drying for weeks. Kayseri's butchers slice it paper-thin to fold into eggs, sandwiches, or simple bread rolls sold at market stalls.
Why it's made this way: Kayseri's cold, dry Central Anatolian climate made it ideal for air-curing meat long before refrigeration, and the city has been synonymous with pastırma production for centuries.
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