Middle Eastern flatbread with minced meat
Lahmacun (Lahmajun)
![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Lahmacun.jpg/220px-Lahmacun.jpg) Lahmacun with salad
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Alternative names
| Lahmajun, lahmajoun, lahm b'ajin, lahmajo, lahmajin, lahamagine, lahmatzoun
|
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Course
| Main
|
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Region or state
| Levant
[1]
|
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Serving temperature
| Warm
|
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Main ingredients
| Minced meat, vegetables and herbs
|
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|
Lahmacun is often topped with vegetables and rolled up.
Lahmacun
(
lah-m?-
JOON
;
Turkish pronunciation:
[lahma:'d?un]
ⓘ
;
Arabic
:
??? ?????
,
romanized
:
la?m bi-?aj?n
,
lit.
'meat with dough'),
[2]
[3]
[4]
Lahmajun
,
[2]
or
Lahmadjo
(
Armenian
:
???????
),
[5]
is a Middle Eastern
flatbread
topped with minced meat (most commonly beef or lamb), minced vegetables, and herbs including
onions
,
garlic
,
tomatoes
, red peppers, and
parsley
, flavored with spices such as chili pepper and paprika, then baked.
[6]
Lahmacun is often wrapped around vegetables, including
pickles
, tomatoes,
peppers
, onions, lettuce, parsley, and roasted
eggplant
.
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
Originating from the
Levant
region of the
Arab world
,
[1]
lahm bi ajeen or lahmacun is a popular dish in
Lebanon
and
Syria
.
[4]
[11]
In the Levant it is part of a series of foods called, collectively,
Manakish
- flatbreads with toppings. It is also sometimes referred to as "Lebanese Pizza."
[12]
It is also very popular in
Armenia
[13]
[5]
and
Turkey
.
[13]
It is sometimes described as "Armenian pizza",
[14]
or "Turkish pizza",
[15]
or similar names due to its shape and superficial similarity. However, unlike pizza, lahmacun is not usually prepared with cheese
[13]
and the crust is thinner.
[16]
In Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine it is also known as "sfiha" (
Arabic
:
?????
,
romanized
:
?af??a
,
lit.
'
thin plate
'
or
'
sheet
'
).
Etymology and terminology
[
edit
]
The name entered English from
Turkish
lahmacun
, pronounced
lahmajun
, and from
Armenian
???????
(
lahmajo
), both derived from
Arabic
??? ?????
(
la?m ?aj?n
,
la?m bi-?aj?n
), meaning "meat with dough".
[2]
[3]
[4]
History
[
edit
]
Flatbreads in the Middle East have been cooked in
tandoors
and on metal frying pans such as the
tava
for thousands of years.
[3]
They have been used to wrap meat and other foods for convenience and portability. However, until the wider adoption in
medieval
times of the large
stone ovens
, flatbreads stuffed or topped with meat and other foods were not baked together, cooking the bread and the topping at the same time. A variety of such dishes, such as
sfiha
and
manakish
, became popular in countries formerly parts of the
Ottoman Empire
, especially Turkey, Armenia, Lebanon and Syria. A thin flatbread, topped with spiced ground meat, became known as
lahm b'ajin
(meat with dough), shortened to
lahmajin
and similar names.
[3]
[4]
According to Ayfer Bartu, lahmacun was not known in Istanbul until the mid-20th century.
[17]
Bartu says that before the dish became widespread in Turkey after the 1950s, it was found in Arab countries and the southern regions of Turkey, around
Urfa
and
Gaziantep
.
[1]
Variations
[
edit
]
Controversy
[
edit
]
Due to the hostile nature of the
relations between Armenia and Turkey
, the opening of Armenian restaurants serving the food in
Russia
was met by some protests.
[5]
[20]
In March 2020,
Kim Kardashian
, an American socialite and media personality of Armenian heritage, posted a video on her Instagram saying "Who knows about lahmacun? This is our Armenian pizza. My dad would always put string cheese on it and then put it in the oven and get it really crispy." This sparked outrage among Turkish social media users, who lashed out at her for describing lahmacun as Armenian pizza.
[21]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Lahmacun
.
- ^
a
b
c
Bartu, Ayfer (2001).
"Rethinking Heritage Politics in a Global Context"
. In AlSayyad, Nezar (ed.).
Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment
.
Greenwood Publishing Group
. p. 154.
ISBN
978-0-275-96612-6
.
- ^
a
b
c
"Entry: lahmacun"
.
American Heritage Dictionary
.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
. Retrieved
2020-01-07
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Marks, Gil (17 November 2010).
Encyclopedia of Jewish Food
. HMH.
ISBN
978-0-544-18631-6
– via Google Books.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Marks, Gil (1999).
The World of Jewish Cooking
. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 37.
ISBN
978-0-684-83559-4
.
- ^
a
b
c
McKernan, Bethan (27 October 2016).
"A 'pizza war' has broken out between Turkey and Armenia"
.
The Independent
. Retrieved
10 December
2016
.
- ^
Alkan, Sena (19 November 2016).
"A delicious, fresh experience: try lahmacun"
.
Daily Sabah
. Retrieved
16 January
2020
.
The true origin of lahmacun is a mystery...
- ^
Ghillie Basan (1997).
Classic Turkish Cookery
. Tauris Parke Books. p. 95.
ISBN
1-86064-011-7
.
- ^
Allen Webb (2012).
Teaching the Literature of Today's Middle East
. Routledge. pp. 70?.
ISBN
978-1-136-83714-2
.
- ^
Sally Butcher (2012).
Veggiestan: A Vegetable Lover's Tour of the Middle East
. Anova Books. pp. 128?.
ISBN
978-1-909108-22-6
.
[
permanent dead link
]
- ^
Jeff Hertzberg, M.D.; Zoe Francois (2011).
Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day
. St. Martin's Press. pp. 216?218.
ISBN
978-1-4299-9050-9
.
- ^
Dmitriev, Kirill; Hauser, Julia; Orfali, Bilal (2019-09-24).
Insatiable Appetite: Food as Cultural Signifier in the Middle East and Beyond
.
Brill
.
ISBN
978-90-04-40955-2
.
- ^
Amari, Suad (2003-01-01).
Cooking the Lebanese Way
. Lerner Publications. p. 46.
ISBN
978-0-8225-4116-5
.
- ^
a
b
c
Carol Helstosky (2008).
Pizza: A Global History
. London: Reaktion Books. pp. 59?.
ISBN
978-1-86189-630-8
.
- ^
"
'Armenian Pizza' Is the Comfort Food You Didn't Know You Were Missing (Recipe)"
.
Smithsonian Magazine
. Retrieved
16 January
2020
.
No one knows for certain whether lahmacun's roots lie in Armenia, or elsewhere in the Middle East. "The race to find where these ancient foods originated is not fruitful territory," cautioned Naomi Duguid, author of Taste of Persia: A Cook's Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan. After all, meat-enhanced flatbreads are ubiquitous throughout the region...
- ^
"Turkish flatbread lahmacun ? just don't call it pizza"
.
South China Morning Post
. 4 April 2015.
- ^
The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities
. Routledge. 10 January 2014.
ISBN
978-1-317-93412-7
. Retrieved
16 January
2020
.
- ^
Bartu, Ayfer Suna (1997).
Reading the Past: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Istanbul
. University of California, Berkeley. p. 149.
We became a nation of lahmacun eaters. Fifty years ago no one in Istanbul knew what lahmacun was ? or if we did, we called it pizza.
- ^
a
b
Mahir, Hasan (3 March 2008).
Geziantep: Gaziantep gezi notları
(in Turkish). p. 148.
- ^
"Halep i?i lahmacun tarifi"
.
Hurriyet
(in Turkish). 24 November 2020
. Retrieved
24 September
2023
.
- ^
"Lahmacun Kimin?"
.
kapsamhaber.com/
(in Turkish)
. Retrieved
2018-12-10
.
- ^
"Kim Kardashian faces Turkish backlash after calling lahmacun 'Armenian pizza'
"
. 27 March 2020.
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