Gluten Free Etsiz Çiğ Köfte Recipe

Çiğ Köfte is a bulgur based Turkish meze. It is originally a meze made with raw meat. But after some regulations are made, it was banned to be sold, so restaurants started to make vegan çiğ köftes. For a couple of years çiğ köfte has been made etsiz (meatless). Tjis is also a vegan and at the same time gluten free çiğ köfte.

Çiğ köfte is one of the recipes that can be gluten-free both in the easiest and most difficult way. The thing that makes it gluten-free in the easiest way is that bulgur, which contains gluten, does not add an obvious flavor to the recipe. Çiğ Köfte gets its real flavor from the other ingredients and isot it contains. Therefore, when you remove the bulgur from it, there is no big change in its flavor. But there is one more condition, of course, and that is to use a neutral ingredient like bulgur instead of bulgur.

Of course, it's not enough just to have a neutral flavor. It is also necessary to have a fine-grained ingredient such as bulgur. There are two ingredients that fulfill these conditions; corn semolina, millet and rice semolina. Due to its white color, rice semolina would not visually give the desired color, and after sharing the boza recipe, many people who wanted to try the recipe had to follow the process of finding and buying millet one by one, so I preferred corn semolina in order not to experience the same thing again. But let's talk about corn semolina, just in case. Corn semolina is semolina made from corn. You can most likely find it in herbalists, or at worst online shops. If you don't know what kind of ingredient it is and what it looks like, you can search it in Google images.

Although corn semolina is a very fine-grained ingredient, it is not an ingredient like bulgur that softens when hot water is poured over it and set aside. Don't ask how I know. In order for the corn semolina to soften completely, it must be cooked by boiling. And not just a little water. It holds a lot of water and it doesn't take long for it to cook and soften. Make sure that the corn semolina is 100% softened and completely drained without removing it from heat.

Corn semolina is not an ingredient like rice that absorbs the remaining water after removed from heat. It should absorb the water completely during the cooking phase. Otherwise, the çiğ köfte will be runny. Because it does not absorb the water while you wait, and it does not absorb the water of the ingredients such as tomato paste and pomegranate syrup that you add into it as well. Therefore, even if you cook the semolina very well, gluten-free çiğ köfte is not as thick as gluten-containing çiğ köfte. If your raw meatballs do not have the consistency you want, you can use corn flour or gluten-free breadcrumbs as a thickener.

Enjoy the recipe...

Enjoy...