The traditional way to prepare ‘sucuk’ is to grind the meat several times then knead it for a long time with the spices. It’s then fed it into natural or plastic sausage casings and left to dry for several weeks.

The salt and spices preserve the meat during the drying and fermentation process, leaving a hard, dry and flavorful sausage with a high fat content that’s ideal for frying and grilling.

‘Sucuklu yumurta’ (soo-JOOK’-loo yoo-MUR’-tah), or ‘sucuk’ and eggs’ is another way to serve this spicy sausage at breakfast. Slices of ‘sucuk’ are fried in a small, single-portion copper skillet called a ‘sahan’ (sah-HAHN’).

Once the ‘sucuk’ is crispy and has released enough fat, the eggs are broken on top. The egg yolks are often left runny to allow for dipping crusts of bread in the mixture.

Grilling ‘sucuk’ allows the fat to drip away leaving you with flavorful and fairly low-fat grilled sausages. Grilled ‘sucuk’ is often sandwiched between chunks of white bread or wrapped in flour tortilla-like ‘lavash’ bread.Grillers often gather around the fire with chunks of bread in hand to take pieces of sizzling ‘sucuk’ right off the grill. For this reason, many Turkish ‘mangal’ (mahn-GAHL’), or barbecue parties often take place on foot!