Kebab Shop Stuff
Kebabs need sauce and toppings and stuff. Meat and carbs and veggies are fine, but the condiments really make the meal when it comes to kebabs.
spicy red kebab sauce the fanta one sauce algerienne (& sauce samurai) sumac onionsGarlic Yogurt
Garlic Yogurt is the queen of kebab sauces. You can't go wrong with garlic yogurt (unless you're cutting it with mayonnaise to save money. many such cases...😞), and it's great on literally everything. I could just eat this with a spoon (and I have, but I don't recommend eating the whole batch).
WHAT YOU NEED
- 450g (1lb) plain whole-fat yogurt (it's probably labeled either greek or turkish, depending on where you live)
- 2 cloves finely minced or grated garlic
- 20g (1.5 tbsp) butter
- dried mint to taste (start with a little and more as needed. if it's too minty, it won't taste right!)
- salt to taste
- water, if necessary
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HOW-TO
- Dump the yogurt in a mixing bowl. Whisk it a bit to fluff it up.
- Put the butter in a small pot and melt it over medium low heat. When it's melted, add the garlic. Let it cook for just a little while, so the garlic can sizzle a bit. It's fine if the garlic gets a golden-yellow color, but you don't want to brown the butter.
- Scrape all of the garlic and butter into the yogurt and quickly whisk it in.
- Whisk in the dried mint and salt. I just add these incrementally until it tastes about right. If it feels too think, you can add water. I usually have to add about 2-3 tbs, but your yogurt might be different!
- Scoop the yogurt into a jar. It'll keep in the fridge until you're done putting it on everything.
Spicy Red
A lot of kebab places will have a white sauce (usually a garlic yogurt, or a sad mayonnaise-y version thereof) and a spicy red sauce to go with it. I've had kebabs like this in multiple European countries, but I'd say this is basically the most prevalent sauce selection in the US. All of the kebab spots in this country want to be NYC halal carts, and the halal carts usually have red and white on offer. I'm not opposed to this arrangement, but I do have opinions.
Some kebab shops make their red sauces in-house or buy a commercial bottled version from their food service supplier. I've had many of these sauces and I've tried out many recipes, but they kind of just suck. They're never as spicy or flavorful as I want them to be, and I always find myself wishing I just bought sriracha instead. The halal carts and their imitators on this side of the Atlantic pretty much universally use sriracha, and some of the cheaper dönerimbisse in Germany used it when I was there, too. It's good, it's spicy, and you don't have to do dishes when you want to use it.
Kebab Sauce
Some kebab shops will skip the white-and-red charade and make a pink sauce that's basically a spiced combination of the two. It's like burger sauce for kebabs, and it's wonderful.
WHAT YOU NEED
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the one with fanta in it
If you've never been to a Swedish pizzeria, it's probably pretty different from what you're used to! Many pizzerias in Sweden these days double-up as kebab shops (this is why kebabpizza exists, by the way!), and some of them triple- or even quadruple-up as burger and/or hot dog places. The cheapest and late-nightest of the cheap late-night pizzerias tend to cut their kebab sauces with Fanta and sour cream, and the result is as delicious as it is fucked up. You have to try it, at least once.
This is only tangentially related, but Swedish pizzerias and American Tex-Mex taquerias have convergently evolved to do a lot of similar stuff. Both of them put sour cream where it doesn't belong and both tend to use orange soft drinks unconventionally. If you read this in a trade publication or
WHAT YOU NEED
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WHAT YOU NEED
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NOTES