Hot Meyhane Quick

Atom — yoghurt with sizzled chilli

Name: Atom — yoghurt with sizzled chilli
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 2 min
Total time: 7 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Aegean
Ingredients: 400 g Strained yoghurt; 1 cloves Garlic; 2 g Salt; 40 g Butter; 2 tbsp Hot chilli flakes

Strained yoghurt under dried chillies sizzled in butter at about 160 °C. Let the butter get hotter and the chilli burns, tasting of smoke instead of heat.

Meze · Aegean · Under 30 minutes · For guests

7 minTime

204Kcal / serving

814Total kcal

Preparation: 5 min
Cooking: 2 min
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Very cheap
Season: All year

Where this dish comes from

The hottest meze of the İzmir and Aegean meyhane. The name, “atom”, is said to come from the way it goes off in the mouth. Dried hot chillies are sizzled in butter and poured into the middle of cold, thick strained yoghurt — a plate where heat and cold, fat and acid meet on one spoon. At a rakı table it is eaten in small portions, with bread dipped in it.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Mix the yoghurt with the garlic and salt, spread it in the bowl and hollow the middle with a spoon.

You will need: A small frying pan · A serving bowl

Mix the yoghurt with the crushed garlic and salt and spread it in the bowl.

Look for The yoghurt does not run off a spoon.

Why Strained yoghurt carries around 8–10% protein and is thick enough that the hot butter sits in the middle instead of running across it.

Starch still asleep The granules are just floating there doing nothing. No body arrives before 62 °C.

Salt · 0.49% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.
Melt the butter over a low flame until it foams, take it off the heat and stir in the chilli flakes for 20 to 30 seconds.

Look for The butter turns deep red and the chilli stays red, with no sharp burnt smell.

Why The chilli’s colour and aroma dissolve into the fat, and at around 160 °C that takes seconds. Past about 180 °C the milk solids and the chilli blacken and the heat turns to soot.

If it went wrong

If the chilli has blackened, pour it away and start again: a burnt taste cannot hide in yoghurt.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

Maillard is running Amino acids have met reducing sugars. The crust, the roasted flavour and that smell all come from here. no way back

Frying dynamics Surface water is flashing to steam and pushing outward — that is the shield keeping the oil out. no way back

Salt · 0.44% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.

The oil is under 170 °C. No shield forms, so the food soaks up fat and goes soggy.
Pour the hot butter into the hollow in the yoghurt and serve at once.

Look for The butter sits in a glossy pool on the yoghurt.

Why The contrast between cold yoghurt and hot butter is the dish; left to wait, the butter sets.

Salt · 0.44% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 160 °C · 6 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

4

Ingredients

400 g Strained yoghurt
1 cloves Garlic
2 g Salt
40 g Butter
2 tbsp Hot chilli flakes

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete Someone living with diabetes

The 1 rules we hold for this group did not fire for this dish. That does not mean the dish is suitable for them; it means those particular rules did not apply.

Not about the dish — about the person

Salt in a day

5 g

Ages 2 to 15 Context established

No separate figure is given for a child: the adult value is adjusted downward by the child’s energy requirement. So for a small child the limit is well below 5 g and moves with age — printing one number would invent a precision the source does not offer. Under one year, and 6-24 months, fall outside this recommendation altogether; added salt is not on the table at that age in any case.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Free sugars

10%

Strong recommendation — adults and children Context established

The same share for adults and for children. Ten per cent of a 2000-calorie day is roughly 50 g of sugar, and a single can of a fizzy drink is more than half of it. The risk of weight gain, obesity and tooth decay rises above this line.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

5%

Conditional recommendation Context established

This one carries a different strength, and the difference is written down on purpose: 10% is a strong recommendation, 5% is conditional. That is WHO’s own distinction, and putting the two in one sentence would say the evidence behind them is equally strong.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

Protein in a day

0.83–1.31 g/kg

Infants, children and adolescents Context established

Per kilogram the need is higher in a child than an adult, because growth wants protein too. There is no single number: it runs between 0.83 and 1.31 g by age. Which age takes which figure is not written here, because writing it without reading the table would be inventing it.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

The infant feeding calendar

5 years

Shapes that are a choking risk Context established

Whole nuts are not given below five years old — the reason is choking, not allergy. The same logic covers anything round and firm: quarter a grape lengthways, cut sausage along its length rather than across. The nut itself is not the problem; ground or as a butter it is fine from around six months. What changes is the shape, not the ingredient.

NHS, Foods to avoid giving babies and young children

What is done, and what is not: The salt and sugar thresholds are quoted in WHO's own words; not even WHO gives a gram figure specific to a child, only that the adult value is adjusted down by energy requirement. The approach to portions, fussy eating and texture is on the page; this child's growth curve, and any allergy they have, cannot be.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable as it is
Vegan Not suitable Strained yoghurt, Butter
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable if the label checks out Strained or aged: most of the lactose is gone, but not all of it.
Diabetes-friendly It depends

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

Calculated nutrition

203.6 kcal
10 g Protein
3.8 g Carbohydrate
17.1 g Fat
0.9 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

Vitamins and minerals · per serving

Vitamins

Vitamin A 136 µg · 17%
Vitamin D 0 µg · 0%
Vitamin E 1.2 mg · 10%
Vitamin K 3.3 µg · 4%
Vitamin C 2.8 mg · 3%
B1 (thiamin) 0.04 mg · 3%
B2 (riboflavin) 0.31 mg · 22%
B3 (niacin) 0.50 mg · 3%
B5 (pantothenic acid) 0.35 mg · 6%
Vitamin B6 0.16 mg · 11%
Folate 8.7 µg · 4%
Vitamin B12 0.77 µg · 31%

Minerals

Potassium 212 mg · 11%
Calcium 109 mg · 14%
Phosphorus 149 mg · 21%
Magnesium 16.3 mg · 4%
Iron 0.27 mg · 2%
Zinc 0.62 mg · 6%
Copper 0.03 mg · 3%
Manganese 0.09 mg · 5%
Selenium 10.3 µg · 19%
Sodium 231 mg · 10%

% of daily need for:

Percentages are shares of the reference values printed on food labels (Turkish Food Codex labelling regulation, Annex 13 (identical to EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex XIII)), not a personal requirement. For sodium the reference is a ceiling. Computed from raw ingredients; cooking lowers some vitamins. "~": not measured in some of the ingredients.

USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy · ANSES Ciqual 2025 · CoFID 2021 · Swiss FCDB 7.1

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Nutri-Score

C Per 100 g of the raw mixture, computed with the published Nutri-Score algorithm (2023 update). Confidence: low.

Nutri-Score compares a food with others of its kind; it is not a health claim or personal dietary advice on its own. Cooking drives off water, so the cooked dish may score differently.

How it was calculated

Category: general food · Negative points 10 − positive points 3 = 7

Energy 657.6 kJ → 1
Saturated fat 6.57 g → 6
Sugars 3.78 g → 1
Salt 0.503 g → 2
Protein 8.31 g → 3
Fibre 0.77 g → 0
Fruit, vegetables, legumes %0 → 0

Salt = sodium × 2.5. Only ingredients plainly in the fruit-vegetable-legume group are counted towards that share; doubtful ones are left out, which can only make the letter worse. Values from USDA FoodData Central and Ciqual; 96% of the weight is a close rather than exact match.

After the heat goes off

Serving

At once, with bread or toasted flatbread, beside other meze.

Keeping · 2 days

Two days covered in the fridge; the butter sets, and it is eaten cold.

Cooling and reheating

Not reheated: heat splits the yoghurt.

Does not freeze

Thawed yoghurt weeps and turns grainy.

What is left

Leftover atom makes a sauce for grilled köfte or boiled potatoes.

For a child

The hot chilli is not for a small child: lift a plain yoghurt share out before the butter goes on.

If you have not got it

Chilli flakes → Urfa pepper Isot is smokier and less hot.

Where to go from here

Blooming in fat The method this recipe rests on
Strained yoghurt What it does in heat, water and acid
Butter What it does in heat, water and acid
Chilli flakes What it does in heat, water and acid
Çılbır Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Spicy ezme Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Köpoğlu Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need
For guests Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: richness 38.

Sweet 12
Salty 18
Sour 21
Bitter 11
Umami 25
Heat 15
Richness 38
Aroma 47

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity