Fava: Turkey's Broad Bean Purée Meze (Recipe)
Fava: Turkey's Broad Bean Purée Meze (Recipe)
Turkish fava is a chilled meze of dried peeled broad beans simmered soft with onion and olive oil, blended smooth, then poured into a dish and refrigerated until firm. It sets from its own starch, not gelatin. You cut it into slabs and serve it cold under olive oil, chopped dill and lemon.
Key Takeaways
- Turkish fava is set, not spooned. The warm purée chills at least four hours in a shallow dish, then gets cut into squares.
- Buy dried peeled broad beans, already split. Whole skin-on beans need a full day of soaking and hand peeling before they blend smooth.
- Nothing gels it. Starch from the beans firms the purée as it cools — no gelatin, no agar, no cornstarch.
- Greek fava is a different dish. It is usually built on yellow split peas and served warm and loose, closer to a dip.
- It keeps four to five days covered in the refrigerator, and it does not freeze — thawed fava weeps water and turns grainy.
The meze table arrives in waves, and fava is usually in the first one. It comes as a pale yellow slab, cut square, its edges sharp enough to hold a shallow pool of green olive oil. A drift of chopped dill sits over that, a lemon wedge waits on the side, and the whole thing is cold.
You break off a corner with a fork. It gives without crumbling — dense, cool, faintly sweet from the onion, with the olive oil doing most of the talking.
Nobody at that table calls it a dip.
That is where American cooks go astray, because the same four letters mean one thing in Athens and another in Puglia, and the recipes online blur all of it together.
This piece covers what to buy, why the purée firms on its own, how to get a silky texture, and where fava sits on a spread. It belongs to the same cold, oil-forward family as the olive-oil vegetable dishes Turkish cooks call zeytinyağlı, and it shares a shelf with the dried lentils and beans that anchor Turkish cooking.
What Is Turkish Fava, Exactly?
Fava is a purée of dried broad beans — bakla in Turkish — cooked down with onion, olive oil, salt and often a pinch of sugar. No yogurt, no tahini, and no garlic in the classic version. The bean supplies the body; the olive oil carries the flavor.
What sets it apart from every other bean purée is the last step. The hot purée goes into a shallow dish or a loaf pan and sits in the refrigerator overnight. By morning it is firm all the way through, and you cut it the way you would cut a terrine.
The dish belongs to the Aegean coast and to Istanbul meyhane (tavern) culture, where cold meze land before anything hot and stay on the table for hours. It is vegan by default, as most zeytinyağlı cooking is, and it improves after a night in the fridge.
How Is Turkish Fava Different from Greek Fava?
Same word, different legume, different temperature, different texture. Neither dish is a version of the other.
| Feature | Turkish fava | Greek fava |
|---|---|---|
| Main legume | Dried peeled broad beans | Yellow split peas, though Santorini uses a local legume of its own |
| Temperature | Cold, straight from the fridge | Warm, often just off the stove |
| Texture | Set firm, cut into squares | Loose, spooned and swirled |
| Usual toppings | Olive oil, dill, lemon | Olive oil, raw onion, capers |
The same broad bean travels further than that. Puglia mashes dried peeled favas with bitter greens and serves them warm; Egypt stews whole dried ones for ful medames; Rome eats young fresh favas raw with sheep's cheese in spring. Turkey's is the version that sets.
Which Broad Beans Should You Buy?
This is where most attempts fail before the pot is on the stove.
Peeled and split, or whole and skin-on?
Dried broad beans reach the shelf two ways. The peeled, split ones are pale ivory, about the size of a fat lentil, and they collapse into purée on their own. The whole ones wear a tough beige skin that never softens. Using those means a full day of soaking and pinching off every skin by hand.
Buy the peeled split ones. Bags are labeled fava, iç bakla, or simply peeled broad beans.
How much does bag freshness matter?
More than you would think. Old beans stay chalky through an hour of simmering. Look for a uniform pale color rather than a yellowed, dusty one. Broad beans do supply protein and fiber, but the figures shift with brand and portion — the label on the bag is more reliable than anything quoted secondhand.
Stocking the pantry: Peeled broad beans sit beside the chickpeas and red lentils in our Turkish legumes selection, and fava needs a good finishing oil more than it needs anything else — the olive oil range is the place to start.
How Do You Make Turkish Fava at Home?
Plan around the soak and the chill, not the cooking. Active time is about twenty minutes.
What You Need
- 1½ cups (250 g) dried peeled broad beans, split
- 1 medium yellow onion (about 5 oz / 150 g), coarsely chopped
- ⅓ cup (80 ml) olive oil, plus more for serving
- 4 cups (1 L) water, plus more as needed
- 1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
- 1½ teaspoons salt, plus more to taste
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, for serving
- 1 small red onion, sliced paper-thin, for serving (optional)
- Lemon wedges, for serving
How to Make It
- Rinse the beans, then soak them in a large bowl of cold water for at least 4 hours or overnight. They will roughly double in size.
- Drain the beans and put them in a saucepan with the yellow onion, the olive oil, the sugar if you are using it, and 4 cups (1 L) water. The liquid should sit about an inch (2.5 cm) above the beans.
- Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 to 60 minutes. Stir now and then, and add hot water if the pan runs dry before the beans soften.
- The beans are ready when they collapse against the side of the pan under light pressure. Add the salt in the last 10 minutes and cook off any excess liquid until the mixture looks like loose porridge.
- Blend the mixture while it is still hot, in the pan with an immersion blender or in a food processor, then push it through a fine mesh sieve for the silkiest texture.
- Stir in the lemon juice and taste for salt. The warm purée should pour slowly, like thick pancake batter — thin it with hot water if it is stiff, or simmer it down if it is soupy.
- Pour the purée into a shallow dish, a loaf pan, or several small ramekins. Smooth the top and let it cool to room temperature uncovered.
- Press plastic wrap onto the surface and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. Cut into squares, top with olive oil, dill and red onion, and serve cold with lemon wedges.
Troubleshooting and Variations
- It did not set. The purée went into the dish too thin. Simmer it down for five to ten minutes, then chill it again.
- It set like a brick. Too little water, or too long on the heat. Mash a slab with a spoonful of hot water and re-chill it.
- It tastes flat. Fava takes more salt and lemon than you expect, and both go in while the purée is warm. Cold mutes seasoning.
- It is gritty. The beans were undercooked, or the purée skipped the sieve. Fix either one before it chills.
- Variations. Blend chopped dill into the purée for a green-flecked slab, or spoon thick yogurt over each portion the way the strained-yogurt meze called haydari gets eaten.
Why Does Fava Set Firm in the Fridge?
Starch, and nothing else. Broad beans are starchy legumes, and long simmering gelatinizes that starch — the granules swell and release long chains into the surrounding liquid. As the purée cools, those chains re-associate into a loose network that traps water. Cooks call the result set. Food scientists call it retrogradation.
Two rules follow. No gelling agent belongs near the pot. And the ratio of bean to liquid at the end of cooking decides the outcome: a purée that pours easily while warm slices cleanly when cold, while one that already looks stiff in the pan comes out closer to putty.
The same chemistry explains why fava does not freeze. Freezing pushes that starch network past recovery, and thawed fava sheds water and turns grainy.
How Do You Serve and Store Fava?
Cold, always. Cut the slab into squares or diamonds, or turn out a loaf pan and slice it at the table. Pool olive oil on top — more than feels reasonable — then dill, then lemon.
Bread matters. A plain white loaf or a sesame simit (a ring-shaped bread) beats anything sweet or heavily seeded, because fava is mild and buries easily.
On a meze table it does one job: it is the cool, dense, quiet plate that steadies everything fried and sharp around it. Put it beside the fried eggplant meze called şakşuka and Antalya's tahini-dressed white bean salad and the spread makes sense. Since the finishing oil is tasted raw, it helps to know how Turkish olive oil compares with Greek and Italian bottles.
Keep it covered in the refrigerator with plastic wrap pressed onto the surface, and eat it within four to five days. Dress each portion as you serve it rather than oiling the whole dish on day one.
Short on time: Fava travels well already made, and the prepared meze and deli salads shelf covers the nights you are not soaking beans. Everything else the table needs sits in the Turkish grocery aisles.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of beans are used in Turkish fava?
Dried broad beans that have already been peeled and split — pale ivory, about the size of a large lentil. Bags may be labeled fava, iç bakla, or peeled broad beans. Whole skin-on beans work only if you soak them a full day and pull off every skin by hand.
Do I have to soak the beans overnight?
Overnight is easiest, but four hours in cold water is enough for peeled split beans. A shorter soak simply pushes the simmer past an hour. Whole skin-on beans are the ones that genuinely need twelve to twenty-four hours. Soak in cold water rather than warm so the beans do not sour.
Why does my fava taste bitter?
Bitterness usually traces back to bean skins that made it into the pot, or to olive oil that was heated too hard. Use peeled beans, and add the oil to the simmering liquid rather than frying anything in it first. A stale bag can also taste musty, which reads as bitterness.
Can I make Turkish fava without a blender?
Yes. Cook the beans until they collapse, mash them against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon, then push the mash through a fine mesh sieve. The sieve does the real work either way, since it is what removes the grit. Expect a slightly more rustic texture.
How long does fava need to set?
Four hours in the refrigerator is the minimum for a shallow dish, and overnight is better. A deep loaf pan needs the full night. Let the purée cool to room temperature uncovered first, or condensation pools on the surface. A slab that feels soft at hour three often slices cleanly at hour six.
Is fava the same thing as hummus?
No. Hummus is built on chickpeas, tahini, garlic and lemon, and it stays soft enough to scoop with bread. Fava has no tahini and no garlic, leans on olive oil and onion instead, and sets firm enough to cut. They share a table often, but they are not interchangeable.