🇹🇷 Turkey · Family: Balık Ekmek · Region: Turkey (Coastal)
Karides Ekmek is the shrimp-in-bread sandwich of the Turkish coast: shrimp, fried or grilled, loaded into ekmek the same way the better-known fish version is built. The angle is the coastal kitchen applying its standard street format to shellfish instead of fillet. Shrimp cook fast and turn rubbery the instant they are overdone, so this sandwich is really a test of timing, with the bread there to carry the catch and soak whatever fat or juice it releases.
The build is short and the window is narrow. Shrimp are peeled and either dredged and fried until the coating is crisp and the shrimp just turn opaque, or threaded and grilled over high heat until they take a little char and curl tight. Either way the cook has seconds, not minutes, to get them off the heat at the right moment. A length of ekmek is split, often with the cut faces toasted so the bread firms up against the shrimp, then loaded: the shrimp go in hot, followed by sliced tomato, raw onion cut with sumac, a few leaves of something green, and a squeeze of lemon. Good execution is almost entirely about the shrimp. They have to be cooked through but still snap rather than bounce, the fry coating has to stay crisp between bread rather than going limp, and the lemon and onion have to be present to cut the richness without burying the shellfish. Sloppy versions hand you overcooked shrimp gone to rubber, a soggy fry crust steamed flat inside the loaf, or so little seasoning that the whole thing tastes flat and faintly of the sea and nothing else. Bread that was not toasted and turns to paste under the shrimp is the other common failure.
Variation runs along the fried-versus-grilled split and how the coast dresses it. The fried version eats richer and leans on the crunch of the coating; the grilled version is cleaner and lets a little smoke and char come through. Dressing is usually kept light, lemon and onion doing most of the work, though some stalls add a garlic or yogurt sauce or a spoon of ezme for heat. The fish-in-bread that this descends from is a large enough subject in its own right that it deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. The shrimp version stands on precision: shrimp pulled at the exact moment they are done, a loaf set up not to go soggy, and enough lemon and onion to keep it bright.
More from this family
Other Balık Ekmek sandwiches in Turkey: