🍦 Dondurma (Turkish ice cream)
Dondurma is Turkish ice cream thickened with salep, a flour ground from orchid tubers, and flavoured with mastic resin. The salep makes it dense, chewy and so stretchy that vendors pull it like taffy and play tricks with it on long rods. It melts slowly, tastes of milk with a light pine-like note of mastic, and is eaten with a knife and fork or in a cone.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 litre whole milk
- 200 g sugar
- 2 tbsp salep powder
- 1/2 tsp mastic resin, ground with 1 tsp of the sugar
Method
- Whisk the salep into a little cold milk until smooth.
- Heat the rest of the milk with the sugar, then whisk in the salep mixture and simmer on low heat, stirring, for 15–20 minutes until thick.
- Stir in the ground mastic, cool, then chill well.
- Churn in an ice cream maker, or freeze in a tray and beat hard every 30 minutes for 3 hours, until dense and stretchy.
How to make it lighter
- One scoop of about 100 g is a satisfying portion because the texture is so dense.
- Semi-skimmed milk gives a lighter dondurma, though slightly less stretchy.
- Enjoy it plain rather than with syrups or sweet sauces on top.
History
The style is most closely associated with the city of Kahramanmaraş in southern Turkey, and the variety is often called Maraş dondurması. Street vendors in costume who tease customers with the stretchy ice cream are now a familiar sight across Turkey and abroad.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →