Turkish Pulses: Beans, Lentils & Chickpeas Guide

Walk into any Turkish kitchen and you will find a cupboard full of bakliyat: dried beans, lentils and chickpeas. These humble ingredients power the most loved dishes in the repertoire, from kuru fasulye (white bean stew) to red lentil soup. They are cheap, nutritious and keep for months, which makes them the smartest staples to stock up on with a UK online Turkish grocery order.

White Beans: The National Dish

Kuru fasulye with rice is often called Turkey's national dish, and it starts with good dried white beans. Duru's 1000 g white beans are the reliable everyday choice, cooking up creamy without falling apart, and the larger 7 mm and 8 mm Kirgiz grades give a plumper bite for special pots. Soak overnight, simmer with onion, tomato paste and a little pastirma or sucuk if you like, and serve with rice and cabbage pickles. Short on time? Ready-boiled white beans in cans or jars, like Burcu's 600 g boiled white beans, go straight into piyaz salad with onion, parsley and sumac.

Red Lentils: Soup Country

Mercimek corbasi is the soup that opens almost every Turkish meal, and split red lentils are the key. Duru's 1000 g split red lentils collapse into a smooth, golden soup in about twenty minutes with no soaking needed. Round (football) red lentils, also from Duru, hold their shape slightly better and suit heartier soups like ezogelin, which combines lentils with fine bulgur and dried mint. Keep both in the cupboard and you will never be more than half an hour from a proper soup.

Green Lentils: Salads and One-Pot Meals

Green lentils are the workhorse of everyday cooking. They keep their shape when simmered, which makes them right for mercimekli bulgur pilavi, lentil and pasta soup, and the classic warm lentil salad with olive oil and lemon. Duru's 1000 g green lentils need no soaking, just a rinse and 25 to 30 minutes of simmering. They are also the traditional filling for lentil kofte (mercimek koftesi), mashed with fine bulgur, tomato paste and plenty of spring onion.

Chickpeas: From Stews to Pilav

Turkish cooks grade chickpeas by size, and it matters. Standard 8 mm chickpeas, like Bodrum's 1000 g bag or Duru's, are perfect for nohutlu pilav and hummus. The prized 9 mm koc basi (ram's head) chickpeas from Duru are bigger and butterier, made for etli nohut, the chickpea and lamb stew that anchors every esnaf lokantasi menu. For weeknights, ready-boiled chickpeas from Tamek in 800 g cans skip the overnight soak entirely; rinse and add them to stews in the last twenty minutes.

Beyond the Big Three

Two more pulses deserve space in your cupboard. Black-eyed beans (borulce) cook quickly without soaking and make a bright summer salad with olive oil, tomatoes and herbs. Cranberry beans (barbunya), sold dried by Duru, are simmered in olive oil with carrots and tomato to make barbunya pilaki, one of the great meze dishes, served cold with lemon. Both come in 1000 g bags that last for many meals.

Buying and Storing Tips

Buy pulses in 1 kg bags for freshness, or step up to 2 kg and 5 kg sizes if you cook them weekly; the price per kilo drops noticeably. Store them airtight, away from light, and aim to use dried beans within a year, as older beans take longer to soften. Turkish Online Market stocks the full Duru and Bodrum bakliyat range with UK-wide delivery, so a single order can fill the pulse shelf for months.