Aromatics · Mi

Mint

Menthol is volatile · add off the heat

Per 100 g

70 kcal Energy

3.8 g Protein

14.9 g Carbs

0.9 g Fat

8 g Fibre

Gluten-free

Let’s cook with it → Invent something with it

What it is for

They give the character. Same technique, same ingredient, a different trio of spices — and the dish moves to another cuisine entirely. Most of their aroma molecules are volatile.

Where it catches you out

Volatile ones go in last, sturdy ones first. Mint and basil after the heat; bay and cinnamon right at the start.

The knack

Fresh mint goes in off the heat; dried mint is bloomed in fat. They are not the same job.

Storage and health

How to keep it, and who it suits.

Keeping it

Fresh mint keeps a week in the fridge with its stems in water and a bag over the top; dried mint keeps 1-2 years airtight in the dark.

Gluten-free

Plain mint is naturally gluten-free.

Glycaemic index

This ingredient carries no meaningful carbohydrate, so it has no glycaemic index. On its own it will not move blood sugar; what you eat alongside it decides that.

What it works with

Pairings, and the reason for each

"They go well together" is not an explanation. Every pairing below has a chemical or structural mechanism under it.

Yoghurt →

The mint terpenes are lipophilic and partition into the milk-fat phase, from which they release slowly. That is why mint in yoghurt lasts through a mouthful and mint in water does not.

Butter →

Sizzling dried mint in butter is an oil extraction; because the leaf is dried the extraction is efficient, and the fat protects the terpenes from immediate evaporation.

Also works with

Lentil

Bulgur

Chickpea

White cheese

Lemon

Chilli flakes

What it fights with

Water

Prolonged simmering destroys *fresh* mint’s aroma; dried mint is far more heat-tolerant because the most volatile fraction has already gone.

What goes on top

Dried mint sizzled in butter with chilli: the standard finish on yoghurt soups, mantı, çılbır and lentil soup

Key compounds

Karvon: An important correction: Turkish dried nane is usually *Mentha spicata*, which is carvone-dominant, not menthol. It gives a sweeter, non-pungent character and none of the true cooling menthol produces through TRPM8.

Nutritionally

At culinary doses mint contributes nothing nutritionally; the claim that it aids digestion comes from peppermint oil’s smooth-muscle effect at pharmacological doses, not from a pinch on soup.

Where it turns up

What is made with it

14 dishes in the database use it.

Soups 6

Highland yoghurt soup

The default Turkish yoghurt soup and the textbook terbiyeli çorba. Rice simmers in water, yoghurt, flour and egg yolk are beaten separately, tempered with hot broth, returned to the pot and thickened without ever boiling. Finished with dried mint bloomed in butter.

Toyga soup

A thicker, more archaic cousin of yayla çorbası: hulled wheat instead of rice, strained yoghurt instead of plain. A hospitality dish made in big pots at religious holidays, eaten hot or cold.

Afyonkarahisar, Amasya, Kayseri, Sivas

Ayran soup

A grain and pulse soup carried on thinned yoghurt. Wheat and chickpeas are soaked overnight, boiled separately, then folded into salted, watered yoghurt. Made hot in some regions and cold in others.

Erzurum, Van, Diyarbakır, Malatya

Cold ayran soup

It deserves its own record because the technique is categorically different: nothing is heated. Boiled and cooled chickpeas and wheat are stirred into yoghurt thinned with cold water and salted, then dill, dried mint and ice go in.

Konya, Karaman, Malatya

Lebeniye soup

A yoghurt soup thickened with chickpeas and hulled wheat, finished with garlic and mint in butter. The Antep version adds small köfte. In Mardin it goes by çoban çorbası.

Gaziantep, Hatay, Diyarbakır, Mardin

Tutmaç

Small cut noodles cooked with meat or lentils, with garlic yoghurt poured over at the plate rather than stirred into the pot. This is a far older and far simpler answer to the curdling problem than terbiye.

Mezze 2

Cacık

A Turkish mezze of yoghurt, cucumber, garlic, salt, water and olive oil. A hot-weather dish whose consistency runs from thick enough to spoon to loose enough to drink — both are correct, and it varies by region.

Haydari

A thick mezze of strained yoghurt, garlic and herbs. One thing separates it from cacık and it is decisive: haydari has no cucumber and the yoghurt is strained, so a spoon stands up in it.

Mains 3

Mantı

Tiny dough parcels are boiled, laid over garlic yoghurt and finished with sizzled butter and chilli. Dried mint and sumac come last.

Kayseri

Yuvalama

Tiny balls of rice flour and minced lamb, rolled by hand, cooked with lamb shank and chickpeas, with a yoghurt and butter sauce stirred in at service. The consistency is close to a soup, but in Gaziantep it counts as a main.

Gaziantep

Small meatballs in yoghurt

Tiny bulgur-cased köfte cooked with chickpeas in a yoghurt broth. Gaziantep sources insist it is not yuvalama: yuvalama’s balls are rice flour, ufak köfte’s are bulgur.

Gaziantep

Preserving & fermentation 1

Tarhana

A winter store made by fermenting, drying and milling a dough of flour, yoghurt, vegetables and spices. One of the few doubly fermented cereal-dairy composites in the world: both lactic acid bacteria and yeasts are at work.

Uşak, Kastamonu, Kahramanmaraş

Sauces & finishes 2

Sizzled butter

Butter heated in a small pan until it foams, met with chilli flakes and poured over cold garlic yoghurt. The most characteristic Turkish finish there is: mantı, yayla çorbası, Ali Nazik, çılbır.