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ADishIndependent states

Keşkek

A wedding and festival dish of wheat and meat cooked for hours and pounded together. On UNESCO's intangible heritage list since 2011.

Cooking keşkek at a celebration
Celal Erdogdu from Riga, Istanbul, Turkey, Latvia / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0

For keşkek, hulled wheat is soaked the day before, then cooked for hours with lamb or chicken in large cauldrons. The mixture is pounded with wooden mallets and topped with sizzling butter.

It is a communal dish: villagers, women and men, prepare it together for weddings, circumcision feasts, religious holidays and votive offerings, while davul and zurna play and the pounders take turns.

"The ceremonial Keşkek tradition" was inscribed by Türkiye on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.

Sources

  1. UNESCO ICH — Ceremonial Keşkek tradition
  2. Wikipedia

Updated: October 2, 2026

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