Pastrami is a food made in Turkish cuisine by drying raw meat with various spices and salt.
Today, Kayseri is known as the pastrami production city. Pastrami is an old Turkish food. It is known that the first to make pastrami were the Huns in Central Asia. As a matter of fact, in Weber-Baldamus' world history book, it is known that the Huns spoke of their customs in this regard as follows: “The Huns do not know food, they eat the roots of wild plants and half-cooked meat that they crush between their calves on the horse's back. ” However, the two-pocketed horse saddles belonging to the Huns in Hungarian museums show that the dried meat was put in these bags and did not touch the calf of the horse.
The saddles of the Hun cavalry, who flocked to the west from Central Asia, filled canned dry meat in bags, the presence of pastrami in the Oghuz people who settled in Anatolia and its existence for centuries, the Turks living in the steppes of Central Asia one day to prepare salted, dry and smoky meat in autumn in preparation for the winter indicates that this food came from Central Asia. Pastrami in Kayseri somehow started with the Turks coming from Central Asia and developed over time. Famous Traveler Evliya Çelebi speaks of Kayseri in the 17th century as follows: “Makulat and manufactured white bread, lavaşa yufka, layered pastry, lahm-ı kadit, cumin bacon and nilski beef sausage are not on any side of the world.” (Evliya Celebi, 1970). As understood from the information in Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname, there was a pastrami production in Kayseri in the 17th century. Pastrami was brought to Rumelia, the Balkans and its surroundings by the Turks. Migrating with the Oghuzes during this historical journey, pastrami made Kayseri, in the middle of Anatolia, its home; Then his fame spread all over the world.
