Turkey Urfa Chili from the Bakehouse
Featuring incredible red-black pepper from Sanliurfa
While the Bakehouse is known, of course, for amazing artisan bread and pastry, there is a whole other area of culinary activity in which the Bakehouse team quietly excels: soup! While many people around the country can enjoy the Bakehouse bread and pastry through the good work of Mail Order, the soup specialties are solely available to locals! All of the Bakehouse soups are pretty sensational, but my personal favorite over all these years is the Turkey Urfa Chili. For starters, it tastes terrific. Every time I think about making a turkey chili (the soup) with a Turkey chile (the pepper), the double meanings of the words get me going! I love this almost as much as the soup itself!
Urfa pepper, if you don’t know it, is one of the least known, yet most intriguingly delicious, spices on our shelves. If you like big flavor and a compelling but still very manageable bit of heat, come by and taste this terrific product. It’s interesting. It’s intriguing. It’s exceptional. It’s great eating! And it makes magic in this wonderful chili.
In over 40 years of cooking, I’ve seriously never tasted anything like these red-black pepper flakes from the town of Sanliurfa. The town itself is a mix of diverse peoples and cultures: Kurds, Turks, Muslims, and Christians. It has an ancient history and is mentioned in the Bible many times. I first heard about Urfa pepper nearly 30 years ago now, from the amazing cookbook writer Paula Wolfert. (Paula’s books were some of the first that I used decades ago when I started cooking professionally. They remain wholly remarkable today.) Back then, Urfa and many other foods that are now commonly available in North America couldn’t be found outside their home countries.
This Urfa starts with the special large, deep purple peppers (sort of like rounder poblanos) that are typical to the region. They’re picked each autumn when ripe, then cut and slowly dried in the sun. In the evening, they’re wrapped up in blankets or tarps so that they sweat through the night. The process is repeated daily for over a week until the peppers turn almost black. In the process, the peppers pick up a rich, earthy flavor and smoky aroma. The color is deep and dark—like the darkest red wine you can imagine. The fully dried peppers are crushed, rubbed lightly with oil, and then seasoned with just a pinch of salt.
Aside from the chili, Urfa has been on my mind a lot as of late because it comes from the Kurdish community in Turkey. As some of you know, I have been appreciating the remarkable work of the Kurds who live in Rojava. They have created an amazing non-state entity in northern Syria, a place where women are treated with dignity, where consensus is used in local councils, where they have effectively brought democratic constructs into play in inspiring ways. Unfortunately, that community is at risk right now. Former British Foreign Service member Carne Ross wrote about the situation on his Substack recently.
The Bakehouse’s Turkey Urfa Chili takes all this and puts it together into a delicious, hearty, heart-warming, and wonderfully delicious dish! Organic turkey, tomatoes, and kidney beans seasoned with New Mexico green chili powder and a whole bunch of the Urfa pepper flakes makes for one truly fine chili. It’s also great as a pasta sauce and for making chili-cheese fries. Turkey Urfa Chili dogs, even better still! A wonderful way to warm yourself, your friends, and your family during these cold winter months. Given the extreme cold weather, what more can I say? Swing by soon, buy a pint or a quart, take it home, heat it up, eat, and enjoy!
See the soup schedule
