Borek Recipe In 15 Minutes - Turkish Food Travel (2024)

FAQs

Do you eat borek hot or cold? ›

A borek may be prepared in a large pan and cut into portions after baking, or as individual pastries. They are usually baked but some varieties can be fried. Borek is sometimes sprinkled with sesame or nigella seeds, and it can be served hot or cold.

Borek is made with filo pastry, the paper thin pastry that is mostly used layered to get the signature flakiness. Also known as phyllo pastry, it is used to make both savoury and sweet pastries in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, such as Baklava and Spanakopita.

They're available all across the country in various shapes, sizes and flavours, and with many regional variations. Eaten at breakfast, lunch or any time throughout the day as a snack, there really isn't a bad time to eat börek.

Turkish borek and Greek spanakopita come from the same family of pastry. However, the two often differ in preparation and texture, with Greek spanakopita often having a flakier, puffier crust. Is it burek or borek? Both spellings of this pastry are technically correct, depending on the country.

The burek – and its alternative spelling borek – is a Turkish, Middle Eastern and East European pastry often eaten as a snack from a small food stall or street vendor. In one of its forms, phyllo-like dough is rolled into a long tube which is then overlapped and coiled beside or around itself.

The centrepiece of the whole meal, however, was börek – a savoury pastry made from yufka (a delicate, filo-like dough) and filled with feta cheese, parsley, chicken, minced meat and, occasionally, a few vegetables, such as potato, spinach, leek or courgette.

All About Borek

They're usually triangle-shaped, although tray-style boreks, baked in a pan and then cut into squares, are also common. They're beloved by Armenians, but are equally prized throughout the countries that were once a part of the Ottoman Empire, such as Albania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and Serbia.

Borek dough is just about twice as thick with a #9 thickness. Next, where baklava uses butter between the layers, borek uses a combination of eggs and milk. Brushing an egg & milk mixture on each sheet of borek dough will soften the dough and create a more substantial foundation for the savory fillings.

Conclusion. You are able to enjoy Borek during times when you're in need of a break from your diet or when you want to satisfy an urge. But make sure you don't serve it as food that takes up the bulk of your meals because you'll get plenty of calories from fat, which could result in a variety of issues in the future.

A light meal that can be served even for breakfast, börek can also be served as an aperitif or starter at lunch and dinner. It is a type of dish that is very laborious and requires skill to make and is made using various ingredients according to certain regions of Turkey.

Is borek savory or sweet? ›

Borek, a type of savory pastry that originated during the Ottoman era, is a highly customizable and versatile dish that is commonly enjoyed both at meals and for snacks.

Polish and Jewish (from Poland): habitational name from Borek so named with Polish bór 'pine forest' + the diminutive suffix -ek. As a Jewish name it could sometimes also be from a Polonized form of the Yiddish personal name Borukh.

Types of Borek

It's very common throughout the Balkans, Turkey, and the Levant region of the Middle East. It involves phyllo pastry and some type of filling, like a spiced meat and onion mixture, spinach and cheese, or just plain cheese. In Turkey, they brush the pastry with yogurt and egg.

Like many other dishes of traditional Bosnian cuisine, burek recipe has its origins in Turkish cuisine. In fact, there is a borek dish in Turkey, and you can find more about it in this blog post. Thus, with the Turkish conquests, Burek came to Bosnia, but here it gained a local twist and a different meaning.

To reheat your burek, bake it in the oven at 400° for about 6-8 minutes. You could also make individual spirals or line up the cylinders next to each other and bake for a different look. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to check out The Chopping Block's private Facebook group for the next cooking challenge.

They're also perfect reheated (or eaten cold) for tomorrow's lunch. These bourekas deserve the best quality puff pastry (butter rather than oil-based), and so do you.

Oven: Preheat to 365 degrees. Place Borek on a cookie sheet, and warm for 10-12 minutes.

Since the phyllo turns brittle if left at refrigerator temperatures for more than a day or two, keep it frozen for as long as possible. When you want to use it, plan ahead, as you'll want to transfer it to the fridge overnight or leave it at room temperature for at least four hours.