You too can make bohça mantı at home, a dish that's both visually appealing and captivating to the palate with its unique flavor. Named after the shape of the dough used to enclose it—the "bundle"—this mantı is also acclaimed for its delicious filling. While preparing various types of mantı can be challenging, it's worth the effort and time. So, how do you prepare bohça mantı using a completely traditional recipe? What ingredients should be used? Here are the answers…
For the Dough
- 2 cups flour
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 teaspoon salt
For the Filling
- 300 grams of beef ground meat
- 1 onion
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 tablespoon oil
For the sauce
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon thyme powder
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 clove of garlic
- Yogurt
Place the flour in a bowl, make a hole in the middle with your hand, and crack the egg into it. Then, add the salt and begin preparing the dough by gradually adding water. Kneading the dough thoroughly is the key to a delicious mantı dough. Therefore, it's important to knead the dough thoroughly. The dough for the Bohça mantı should not stick to your hands. However, if you obtain a hard dough, boiling it can be problematic, and the insides may remain raw. Therefore, it's important to achieve the ideal level of softness. After kneading the dough, cover it with a clean, damp cloth and let it rest for about half an hour.
Place the ground meat in a bowl and add the grated onion. If you like, you can add the onion after lightly sautéing it in oil. Then, add the salt and spices and mix the mixture thoroughly. Kneading lightly will help the mixture combine better. You can also add greens such as parsley or dill to the mixture if you like.
Roll out the dough thinly. The thinness of the dough is important for this type of manti. However, the dough shouldn't be so thin that it easily falls apart when boiling. After rolling out the dough to resemble a large sheet of phyllo, cut it into squares. Add a teaspoon of filling, and it's important for this manti to be rich and plentiful. Then, each square should be tightly closed to form a bundle. To do this, lift the four corners of the dough up and bring them together. This will easily create the bundle shape.
Bring water to a boil in a pot. Once boiling, add a pinch of salt. Then, carefully place the mantı in the pot and boil. When the mantı is completely boiled, they will float to the surface. It is important that they do not stick together. The boiling time varies depending on the thickness of the dough, but is between 5-7 minutes. Once all the mantı are boiled, remove them from the water with a colander and place them on a plate.
Melt the butter in a pan and add a small amount of olive oil. You can also make the sauce with just the butter. Once the butter has melted, add ingredients like red pepper flakes and oregano. Just before the butter is done burning, remove it from the heat and add yogurt to the mantı, then pour the sauce over the top. Grated garlic can also be added to the yogurt if desired. If you don't want to go to the trouble of this, you can choose Mantıname products for bohça mantı, prepared with the freshest ingredients.
