TG Gourmet

Four legumes anchor Turkish cooking: red and green lentils (mercimek), chickpeas (nohut), white beans (kuru fasulye), and barbunya (borlotti) beans. Red lentils cook in 20 minutes with no soaking; the beans want an overnight soak. Together they cover soups, pilafs, meze, and the stew many Turks call their national dish.

Open the cabinet next to the stove in any Turkish kitchen and you'll find the jars: red lentils for Tuesday's soup, chickpeas waiting on Sunday's pilav, white beans for the dish everyone's grandmother makes best. Legumes aren't a health trend in Turkey. They're the backbone of home cooking, and they have been for centuries.

This guide covers the ones you actually need, the classic dish each was born to make, and the soaking and cooking times that keep dinner on schedule. Think of it as the legume chapter of our full guide to Turkish pantry staples — start there if you're building the whole shelf from scratch.

Key Takeaways

• Red lentils are hulled and split, so they melt into soup in 15–20 minutes with zero soaking. Green lentils keep their shape and take 25–35 minutes.
• Chickpeas, white beans, and barbunya all want an 8–12 hour soak, then 45–90 minutes of gentle simmering.
• Kuru fasulye over rice pilav is widely called Turkey's unofficial national dish — it's the benchmark every Turkish home cook is judged by.
• Add salça (pepper or tomato paste) and anything acidic only after beans have softened; acid slows them down.
• A cooked cup of lentils carries about 18 grams of protein and 15 grams of fiber; chickpeas come in around 15 and 12 (USDA figures).

What's the difference between red and green mercimek?

Start with the split. Kırmızı mercimek — red lentils — are hulled and halved, so they collapse into a smooth, golden cream within 20 minutes. That collapse is the whole point. It's what gives mercimek çorbası its body without any flour or cream, which is why the soup opens nearly every lokanta menu in Turkey and most home dinners in winter.

Red lentils also carry two other icons. Ezogelin çorbası builds on the same base with bulgur, rice, dried mint, and pul biber — named, the story goes, for Ezo, a famously beautiful bride from a village near Gaziantep whose soup traveled further than she did. And mercimek köftesi turns cooked red lentils and fine bulgur into hand-squeezed, meatless köfte you eat wrapped in lettuce leaves — the dish that disappears first at every Turkish tea gathering.

Yeşil mercimek — green lentils — are the opposite temperament. Whole, unhulled, patient. They hold their shape through 25–35 minutes of simmering, which makes them the choice when you want lentils you can see: green lentil soup with tiny noodles (erişteli yeşil mercimek çorbası), lentil-and-bulgur pilaf, or a warm salad with onion sweated in olive oil. If red lentils are about texture disappearing, green lentils are about texture holding on.

Both belong in the jar row. If you're deciding where to begin, begin red — one 500 g bag makes three or four pots of soup. Our guide to Turkish soups shows how far that one bag can travel.

Why do chickpeas (nohut) show up everywhere in Turkish cooking?

Because they do three completely different jobs. Simmered whole, they become etli nohut — chickpea and meat stew, ladled over buttery rice at every esnaf lokantası (tradesman's lunch spot) in the country. Folded into rice, they become nohutlu pilav, the dish İstanbul's glass-boxed street carts have sold to night-shift workers for generations. And roasted dry, they become leblebi, the crunchy snack the city of Çorum has built its entire reputation on.

Dried chickpeas ask for patience: an 8–12 hour soak, then 60–90 minutes at a gentle simmer. Two honest shortcuts. A pinch of baking soda in the cooking water softens skins noticeably faster. And canned chickpeas are a fair weeknight substitute for pilav or stews — though for anything where the chickpea is the star, cooking from dried gives you a nuttier flavor and a firmer bite that the can never quite matches.

You may have heard arguments about when to salt. Skip them — the rule that actually matters is about acid. Tomatoes, salça, lemon: all of it waits until the chickpeas give when pressed.

Shop dried lentils, chickpeas & beans →

Is kuru fasulye really Turkey's national dish?

Ask ten Turks and at least eight will say yes — kuru fasulye, white beans stewed with onion, salça, and often a little lamb or sucuk, served over rice pilav with pickles on the side. It's the meal soldiers miss, students order first when they come home, and lokanta cooks are permanently judged on. No official body ever declared it the national dish. Nobody needed to.

The beans matter more than you'd think. İspir, a mountain town in Erzurum province, grows white beans so prized they carry protected-origin status in Turkey; cooks pay extra because the beans turn creamy inside while the skins stay intact. Whatever beans you use, the method is constant: overnight soak, gentle 60–90 minute simmer, and the salça — we keep both pepper and tomato versions in our Turkish paste collection — goes in only after the beans have gone tender.

Serve it the way lokantas do. Rice pilav underneath or beside, something pickled, raw onion if you're feeling traditional. That plate, more than any kebab, is what Turkish comfort food actually looks like.

What is barbunya, and why is pilaki worth learning?

Barbunya are cranberry beans — borlotti, if you shop Italian — pink-streaked pods that show up fresh at Turkish markets in late summer and dried the rest of the year. One dish made them famous: barbunya pilaki. The beans braise slowly in olive oil with onion, carrot, garlic, tomato, and a spoon of sugar, then cool completely and land on the table at room temperature with lemon wedges.

That serving temperature confuses American cooks and defines the dish. Pilaki belongs to Turkey's zeytinyağlı family — vegetables cooked in olive oil and eaten cool, when the oil has settled into the beans and the flavors have had a night to make up their minds. Make it a day ahead on purpose. Dried barbunya soak overnight like white beans but cook a little faster, usually 45–60 minutes, and they hold their shape beautifully.

If kuru fasulye is winter, barbunya pilaki is a July meze table: cold beans, warm bread, glass of tea or something stronger, no rush at all.

How long does each legume soak and cook?

Tape this inside the cabinet door. Times assume dried legumes and a normal stovetop simmer; a pressure cooker roughly quarters the cooking times.

Two rules cover most failures. First: acid late. Tomato, salça, and lemon added early can keep beans firm for hours. Second: old beans never fully soften — if a pot refuses to go creamy after two hours, the beans were the problem, not you.

Why does bulgur keep showing up next to every legume?

Because the pairing is older than the recipes. Bulgur and lentils grow from the same Anatolian fields, and Turkish cooks have been combining them since long before anyone used the word protein: fine bulgur binds mercimek köftesi, coarse bulgur thickens ezogelin, and mercimekli bulgur pilavı — green lentils folded through bulgur pilaf — is a full weeknight dinner with nothing but onion and butter added.

The nutrition math happens to work too, and it's honest math. Lentils bring about 18 grams of protein per cooked cup, chickpeas about 15, both with double-digit fiber, per USDA data — which is why a meatless Turkish dinner never feels like something is missing. If you want to go deeper on the grain half of the equation, our bulgur guide breaks down the grind sizes, and the grains, rice & legumes collection keeps both halves on one shelf.

How should you store dried legumes?

Glass jars, tight lids, a cool dark shelf away from the stove's heat. Dried legumes keep for years without spoiling, but they cook best within about a year of purchase — after that they dry out further, and old beans are the number-one reason a pot stays stubborn. Write the purchase month on the jar lid. It takes five seconds and settles every future argument with a pot of beans.

Once opened, keep bags sealed against pantry moths, and don't mix a new bag into the remains of an old one; the two ages will never cook evenly. Cooked legumes freeze well for up to three months — many Turkish home cooks boil a big pot of chickpeas on the weekend and freeze them in meal-sized portions, which turns nohutlu pilav into a 25-minute dinner.

One last pantry note: the spice shelf does half the work here. Cumin, dried mint, and pul biber are the seasoning trio behind nearly every dish in this guide — all three live in our herbs, spices & salt collection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do red lentils need soaking?

No. Red lentils are hulled and split, so they cook through in 15–20 minutes straight from the bag. A quick rinse to clear surface starch is all they need. Green lentils don't require soaking either, though they take 25–35 minutes to turn tender.

Can I use canned chickpeas in Turkish recipes?

Yes, for stews and nohutlu pilav they're a fair weeknight shortcut — rinse them well and add them near the end so they don't break apart. For dishes where chickpeas are the centerpiece, dried chickpeas soaked overnight give a nuttier flavor and a firmer bite.

What's the difference between barbunya and kuru fasulye?

Barbunya are pink-streaked cranberry (borlotti) beans, usually braised in olive oil as pilaki and served at room temperature as a meze. Kuru fasulye are white beans, stewed hot with salça and often meat, and served over rice pilav as a main course.

Why won't my beans soften?

Two usual suspects: the beans are old, or acid went in too early. Beans past a year or two of storage may never fully soften no matter how long they simmer. And tomato, salça, or lemon added before the beans are tender will slow softening dramatically — always season with acid at the end.

Are lentils and chickpeas good protein sources?

Yes. USDA figures put cooked lentils at roughly 18 grams of protein and 15 grams of fiber per cup, and cooked chickpeas at about 15 grams of protein and 12 grams of fiber. That's why so many traditional Turkish legume dishes stand as complete meals without meat.

Which bulgur do I need for mercimek köftesi?

Fine bulgur — sold as köftelik (for köfte). It's ground small enough to absorb the hot lentil mixture and bind it. Coarse (pilavlık) bulgur won't hold together; save that for pilaf and ezogelin.

Ready to fill the jar row? Start with a bag of red lentils and work your way to barbunya — everything in this guide ships from our Turkish grocery, the same pantry we've been stocking for Turkish families in the US since 2003.