Pastırma

Pastırma (pastirma, basturma, bastirma) is Turkish dried beef. Chunks of meat are salted, washed, pressed, dried, coated with fenugreek paste and dried again. It is brown outside from the paste and reddish inside, and the flat shape is the mark of the press. The EU has registered two PGIs: Kayseri Pastırması and Afyon Pastırması.

Back in the 17th century the traveller Evliya Çelebi mentioned Kayseri pastırma as a valuable gift sent to Istanbul. Turks dry it in autumn, the so-called «pastırma summer». In Kayseri that means 25–30 °C by day, 0–5 °C at night and wind off Mount Erciyes; in Afyon, 19–25 °C by day, 6–8 °C at night and humidity below 64 %.

Which meat is used? For Kayseri, chuck, shank and round from male cattle aged 2–5 years and weighing at least 250 kg. For Afyon, soft, less active muscles of cattle and Anatolian buffalo fattened for at least three months in Afyonkarahisar province. The feed named in the specification includes dried clover, wetland reed and poppy-seed cake.

The sequence is the same: salting, washing, pressing, drying, paste, final drying. The EU documents do not give a duration for each step. In Kayseri, a tonne of meat takes 60–80 kg of nitrite curing salt. The paste there combines fenugreek seed flour, vetch and wheat with paprika, chilli, cumin and garlic; dry paste may be no more than 10 % of the finished product. Afyon's paste has no cumin. It is dried in sheltered open-air areas and, in bad weather, in chambers at 20–25 °C.

The flavours differ. Kayseri is spicy and cumin-led, marbled with white flecks of fat, in slices of 3–6 by 8–15 cm. Afyon is dark reddish-brown, the meat taste dominates and it melts quickly in the mouth; it is cut 2–3 mm thin.

Set beside biltong or sliced air-dried beef from a UK or US deli, pastırma is a whole pressed piece in a spicy fenugreek paste. Everything separates pastırma from Jamón: not a pig's leg but a whole pressed piece of beef in a spicy paste. From Jerky it differs in size and method: jerky is thin strips, cooked first and then dried.

At a Turkish grocer, a deli counter or a supermarket chiller, you can recognise Kayseri by the «Kayseri Pastırması» logo and the Turkish GI emblem, and Afyon by its name, the producer's name and address, the EU PGI logo (protected geographical indication) and the Turkish logo.

Why this matters to you: both PGIs come with numbers you can check. Each allows up to 50 % moisture, salt in dry matter is capped at 10 % in Kayseri and 8 % in Afyon, and Afyon allows no more than 50 mg/kg of nitrite. For other dried meats see Cured meats & charcuterie.