Pastirma! Part 1 | Dubai Turkish Restaurant Zurna

The Turkish horsemen of Central Asia used to preserve meat by placing slabs of it in pockets on the sides of their saddles, where it would be pressed by their legs as they rode. This pressed meat was the forerunner of today’s pastirma, a term which literally means ‘being pressed’ in Turkish, and is the origin of the Italian pastrami. Pastirma is a kind of cured beef, the most famous being that made in the town of Kayseri in central Turkey.

The 17th century Turkish writer Evliya Çelebi praised the spiced beef pastirma of Kayseri in his Book of Travels, and Kayseri pastirma is still regarded as the finest of all. Good quality pastirma is a delicacy with a wonderful flavour, which may be served in slices as a cold hors d’oeuvre or cooked with eggs, tomatoes and so on.
 
The different cuts of meat produce different types of pastirma, 19 varieties from a medium-sized animal and 26 from a large. Extra fine qualities are those made from the fillet and contre-fillet, fine qualities are made from cuts like the shank, leg, tranche and shoulder, and second quality from the leg, brisket, flank, neck and similar cuts. The many tons of pastirma produced in Kayseri is almost all sold for domestic consumption all over Turkey.

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