Döner is such a blessing to have, we love it indescribably, as we share it on social media on many occasions. It’s a dish that is constantly in the Turkish dishes and minds.
But do we know what is the History of Doner Kebap? In fact, this is a topic that is often mentioned by many of us. therefore I don’t think its history is well known. And that’s why I wanted to open a little parenthesis on the subject and examine the history of doner kebab, how it was found and where it came from.
Let me tell you from the beginning that there is no definitively proven information when it comes to the history of doner kebab. There are different claims that do not fit together very well. I think it is my duty to share these claims with you here.
It is said that the doner kebab was first invented by Iskender Bey in Bursa, It was emphasized about that approximately 150 years ago, boneless lamb and veal meat was put into a bottle and cooked in front of the fire by making use of the cooking technique of the lamb roast.
We have no objection to this, but while some other sources give the history of doner, they state that the inventor of doner is Hamdi Usta, a cook from Kastamonu. According to these sources, the students of Hamdi Usta, who became famous in Kastamonu thanks to the doner kebab he invented, became the second generation masters who spread doner kebabs: Şükrü Gülsunar and Raif Gülsunar.
But when Evliya Çelebi’s Travel Book is examined, the subject goes to very different places. Çelebi uses the following expressions while describing his views on the Crimean provinces:
“In the whole of the Crimea Province on winter nights, they have room chats, eat and drink many kinds of halvah, meals and various wines, and spend the winter days with a special conversation.
They even sacrifice a fat lamb on those special nights, slice it into slices, put the meat on an iron kebab skewer and arrange the meat with two thin heads, thick in the middle, so that they do not pile a speck from one another in the country. Then they break the wheel of a car and cook a kind of kebab by burning it slowly under the kebab so that it becomes marrow.
Among Tatars, there are many Tatars who ate such a cooked kebab and drank 100 okka of boza. This is how they cook such nice, soft and fresh kebabs that there is no possibility of such kebabs being cooked on earth. Cooking with the wheel of a chariot is essential among Tatars”.
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After reading this, I think that the possibility that doner kebab may have come to Anatolia from Crimea should not be underestimated. As many sources indicate, doner is probably the cousin of Erzurum’s legendary Cağ Kebab.
It is not possible to know the exact dates of the history of Doner Kebap, but it is interesting that the first photograph of doner kebab was taken in Istanbul. The square taken by James Robertson in 1855 and considered to be the first doner kebab photograph is as follows. On the wooden table to the left of the square are pieces of lamb meat, and at the other end of the table are doner kebabs, which are arranged on a hook and cooked in charcoal fire.
So this was the information about the history of doner kebab, which dates back to ancient times in our culture, dear friends. One thing is for sure, the formerly horizontal flip business has evolved over time to vertical. It is not possible to know whether this is in Bursa or Kastamonu.
Bon appetit!