Sumac Onions Recipe – A Turkish Kebab Essential • Turkey’s For Life

Quick, simple and completely delicious! We hope this Turkish sumac onions recipe becomes as much of a staple for you as it is for us.

Sumac Onions

It feels strange to put such a simple recipe on the blog. But this salad of thinly sliced onions coated in tangy sumac spice is such a staple in Turkish cuisine. And for good reason.

The fresh crunch of the raw onions, the citrusy flavour of the sumac. And the clean, bright taste of the freshly chopped parsley. We’ve got three ingredients that were just meant to be together.

Liver’s Best Friend

Three ingredients that were meant to be together…especially when we’re talking about liver!

Order a ciğer şiş (liver shish kebab) or fried liver dishes in a Turkish restaurant and you are almost guaranteed to get a sumac onion salad. Either on the plate as a perfect accompaniment, as part of a meze selection or as part of a mixed salad side dish with additional ingredients.

The texture and the combination of flavours in the tangy onion salad cut through the rich, complex and intense flavours of the liver. It’s magical!

We LOVE the liver and sumac onion salad combo.

The photo above is from when we were in Ankara. It was a miserable, rainy day and we’d (mistakenly) decided to walk to visit the old citadel.

Cold, hungry and wet, we stumbled into this tiny ciğerci place feeling quite sorry for ourselves.

It remains one of the best kebabs we’ve ever had.

Another memorable liver shish kebab was in Istanbul where we found a great little Diyarbakır place on a side street.

Diyarbakır’s famous for liver, so we couldn’t leave without giving it a go. And we went back twice!

As you can see above, they served their sumac onions as a separate side, laid over a bed of lettuce and tomatoes.

We also dressed it with the olive oil and nar ekşisi (pomegranate molasses) that was on the table; more common in the southeast of the country where Diyarbakır is.

Sumac Onions Versatility

But don’t be thinking you can’t enjoy Turkish sumac onions if you’re not a fan of liver.

This is a great salad that goes with lots of grilled meat dishes.

Think köfte (Turkish meatballs), chicken shish, chicken wings.

Döner kebab, cağ kebab, Adana kebab – and not forgetting the famous spicy flatbread, lahmacun!

And you can also add it to your meze table, too. Along with whatever other meze plates you will have on offer.

There’s good news for vegetarians and vegans, too. It’s not all grilled meats.

Serve sumac onions with homemade falafel for some zingy flavour and extra crunch.

How We Make Sumac Onion Salad – Sumaklı Soğan Salatası

For our sumac onion recipe, we’re giving you the main ingredients that you are going to find in all recipes – the main ingredients.

And then, if you want to jazz your simple onion salad up, you can do that with the additional ingredients we suggest.

But, more often than not, if you go into a kebab place to enjoy a shish or some fried liver, your sumac onions are going to be made in this basic way. And they are no less delicious for it.

White Onions

A lot of people like to use red onions in their sumac onion salad recipe. We use white onions because that’s what’s used by the kebab places we go to.

As this is a Turkish sumac onions recipe, we’re sticking with tradition.

Also, away from the norm, the Turkish white onions we buy from the local markets here in Fethiye (tatlı soğan) tend to be milder and sweeter than the red onions.

You’re going to need a sharp knife to first of all cut your onion in half, top to bottom.

And then you need to cut it in half moons – really thin slices – a sprinkling of sea salt and mix around.

Sumac

Sumak in Turkish, this is the star of the show. It actually steals the limelight in other dishes we use it in, so distinctive is its flavour.

Our Turkish chickpea salad and shepherd’s salad just wouldn’t be the same without it!

If you’ve never come across it before, sumac is a popular Middle Eastern spice.

A beautifully rich claret colour, we buy the coarse sumac powder which is ground from the berries of the wild sumac flower. But you can also buy the dried sumac berries, too, and grind your own.

With its tangy, zesty, lemony flavour, it really is the perfect condiment to use in lots of dishes. Particularly those of Turkish and Middle Eastern cuisine.

When the sumac coats your onion slices, their flavour will be immediately transformed.

Fresh Parsley

Along with dill, fresh parsley is very widely used in Turkish cuisine and it’s a key ingredient for sumac onions.

Not too much and not finely chopped.

Around a tablespoonful, roughly chopped so that you get those clean, crisp textures and flavours to complement the tangy sumac and sweet raw onion flavours.

In our sumac onions, the fresh parsley is part of the salad. A robust ingredient for a vibrant taste rather than a garnish.

Turkish cuisine loves fresh parsley so much, it shows up both in the dishes and as a fresh side with your kebab. A palate cleanser.

This is a bit too much for us.

We prefer just a few leaves in the sumac onions for a more subtle flavour.

Fresh Lemon Juice

You’ve seen the photos – a wedge of lemon goes alongside most dishes in Turkish cuisine; including soups!

And a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice is essential for our sumac onions. But only as you are about to serve them.

We want a fresh, crisp sumac onion salad; not slowly marinated sumac onions.

Time To Serve

So that’s it.

Simple ingredients coming together to make a crisp and fresh delicious Turkish onion salad – perhaps the most simple of Turkish salads.

We don’t usually add oil to our sumac onions because we’re mostly serving them with meat that has enough juices, anyway.

But a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a small drizzle of pomegranate molasses (no more than a teaspoonful) goes really well with other pairings.

And if you want to make a more substantial salad, a freshly chopped tomato is a great addition.

Don’t forget to serve your sumac onions alongside many of our other Turkish recipes and make a feast of it.

Sumac Onions Recipe – Sumaklı Soğan Salatası

Share this article