Mercimek Çorbası in the UK: what it is, how to order it, where to find it
Quick answer
Mercimek çorbası is red lentil soup, cooked with onion, carrot and a little tomato paste, blended smooth and finished with lemon, dried mint and a spoon of chilli butter. It is the most common soup in Turkey, served at breakfast, lunch and after midnight, and on a UK Turkish menu it is the cheapest thing you can order and often the best. Every Turkish kitchen makes it slightly differently and every Turk has an opinion about it.
Calories and nutrition
- Calories
- 280
- Protein
- 12 g
- Carbs
- 38 g
- Fat
- 9 g
- Salt
- 1.8 g
220–360 kcal
Portion: One bowl, about 300 ml, with chilli butter and bread.
Without bread, about 190 kcal; a filling, high-fibre starter.
Estimates for a typical portion, based on standard UK and USDA food composition data. Actual values depend on the recipe and the restaurant.
What mercimek çorbası is
Red lentils cook to a purée in twenty minutes, which is why this soup is everywhere: it needs no stock, no meat and no skill beyond patience. Onion and carrot are softened in butter or oil, tomato paste is stirred in, lentils and water follow, and the pot simmers until everything collapses. It is blended smooth, seasoned with cumin and black pepper, and served with a wedge of lemon, a shake of dried mint and, in a good kitchen, a spoonful of butter melted with red pepper flakes poured on top at the last moment. Some regions add potato for body, some add rice; the Antep version is thinner and more sour. It is orange, thick, and should coat the spoon.
Mercimek versus ezogelin
Ezogelin is the other lentil soup on every menu: red lentils with bulgur and rice, more tomato, and mint and pepper cooked into the soup rather than added at the table. It is chunkier, redder and spicier. Mercimek is smoother and plainer and takes its flavour from the lemon and the chilli butter you add yourself. Tarhana, a soup made from fermented dried dough, is the third you will see and the one worth trying when it is on. If you only order one, mercimek is the safer test of a kitchen because it hides nothing.
How to judge it
It should be smooth but not thin, taste of lentil and cumin with the lemon giving it lift, and arrive hot with the chilli butter still bubbling. A grey or brown soup was made with green lentils or burnt paste; a watery one was stretched. It should come with bread, and in a lokanta or an ocakbaşı it is often the first thing on the table while you decide. A restaurant that charges more than a few pounds for it, or serves it lukewarm from a tureen, is not paying attention.
Where in the UK it is done well
Every Turkish restaurant in the country makes it, and the best are the lokanta-style home-cooking restaurants of North London and the ocakbaşı houses that serve it as a starter. The ranking below counts restaurants in our directory whose name signals soup or a lokanta.
How to order it
Order it as a starter with bread, squeeze the lemon in, and add the dried mint and pepper flakes that come alongside. Ask for 'acılı tereyağı' if the chilli butter does not come by default. It is usually the cheapest item on the menu and a full bowl is a light lunch.
Where it's done well
UK councils with the most mercimek çorbası specialists, by restaurant name, in our directory.
Restaurants near you
Search by postcode or use your location to find restaurants likely to serve mercimek çorbası near you.
Make it at home
Serves 4 · 35 min
Ingredients
- 200 g red lentils, rinsed
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 carrot, chopped
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 litre water or light stock
- 1 tsp ground cumin, salt and black pepper
- to serve: lemon wedges, dried mint, and 2 tbsp butter melted with 1 tsp red pepper flakes
Method
- Soften the onion and carrot in the butter and oil over medium heat for eight minutes.
- Stir in the tomato paste and cook for a minute, then add the lentils, water, cumin, salt and pepper.
- Simmer for twenty minutes until the lentils have collapsed. Blend smooth and adjust with water to a pouring consistency.
- Serve with lemon, a pinch of dried mint, and the chilli butter poured over each bowl.
Rinse the lentils until the water runs clear or the soup will foam and taste dusty. The chilli butter at the end is not optional; it is what makes it taste of a Turkish kitchen.
Related dishes
Turkish breakfast, kahvaltı, is a spread of small plates rather than one dish: white cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, honey with clotted cream, jams, eggs cooked with sucuk or as menemen, simit and fresh bread, and endless tea in small glasses. In UK restaurants it is sold per person as a 'serpme' spread and has become a weekend event, especially in North London and Manchester, with queues from ten in the morning.
MezeMeze are the small cold and hot dishes that open a Turkish meal: hummus, cacık, haydari, ezme, stuffed vine leaves, aubergine in several forms, fried liver, halloumi and a dozen more. A meze table is meant to be shared slowly with bread and rakı, and in the UK a spread of six or eight is a full meal for two. Meze is also the best way to eat well in a Turkish restaurant on a budget, and the clearest test of a kitchen's care.