Diyarbakır Offal Quick

Liver skewers

Name: Liver skewers
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 4 min
Total time: 29 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: South-eastern Anatolia
Ingredients: 600 g Lamb’s liver; 100 g Lamb tail fat; 6 g Salt; 2 g Black pepper; 2 pcs Red onion; 6 g Sumac; 15 g Parsley; 4 pcs Lavash

Lamb’s liver in small cubes, close embers, three minutes. Overcooked liver turns grainy and bitter; the whole recipe is about taking it off in time.

Grill and barbecue · South-eastern Anatolia · Under 30 minutes

29 minTime

522Kcal / serving

2089Total kcal

Preparation: 25 min
Cooking: 4 min
Difficulty: Practised hand
Cost: Cheap
Season: All year

Where this dish comes from

Diyarbakır’s breakfast: liver, fat and onion on the grill at seven in the morning. Liver is an organ rather than a muscle, with very little connective tissue, which is why it forgives no long cooking at all.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Peel the outer membrane from the liver and cut out the veins.
Light the charcoal; the embers need to be at full strength.

You will need: A charcoal grill · Thin skewers · A sharp knife

Cut the liver and fat into 2 cm cubes; thread them with one piece of fat to every two of liver.

Look for The cubes all the same size.

Why Liver carries almost no fat; the melting tail fat keeps it from drying.

Starch still asleep The granules are just floating there doing nothing. No body arrives before 62 °C.
Grill 5–8 cm over the embers, turning every 45 seconds, three to four minutes in all. Salt only once the skewers come off.

Look for The thickest cube should read 71 °C at its centre (the USDA FSIS threshold for offal); cut open it should be moist and grey-brown, never bloody.

Why Liver proteins set very fast, so every half-minute past done makes it grainier. Early salt draws out its water and toughens it.

If it went wrong

If the middle is still bloody, return the skewers in 30-second bursts and cut a cube each time; never add two minutes at once.

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
Slice the onion and rub it with the sumac and parsley; salt and pepper the skewers and serve with lavash.

Look for The onion tinged pink and softened.

Why The sourness of sumac cuts the heavy, iron-rich taste of liver.

Salt · 0.52% 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 280 °C · 22 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

4

Ingredients

600 g Lamb’s liver
100 g Lamb tail fat
6 g Salt
2 g Black pepper
2 pcs Red onion
6 g Sumac
15 g Parsley
4 pcs Lavash

What did you think

Who is eating

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

We hold no safety rule for this group that a dish could break — training, or an age, does not make food dangerous. The thresholds below are about the person rather than about the dish.

Not about the dish — about the person

Protein in a day

0.83 g/kg

An adult Context established

Per day, 0.83 g for every kilogram of body weight — about 58 g a day for somebody of 70 kg. This is a floor: the amount that prevents a shortfall, not an optimum.

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

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

What is done, and what is not: There is no calorie target here: daily energy need depends on age, body composition and training volume, and a figure written without them is a guess that looks certain. The protein calculation is offered because it rests on a sourced range and a single input. Supplements, and rapid weight cutting in weight-class sports, are conversations to have with a professional.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Not suitable Bread
Vegan Not suitable Lamb liver, Raw lamb tail fat
Vegetarian Not suitable Lamb liver, Raw lamb tail fat
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
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

522.2 kcal
35.3 g Protein
26 g Carbohydrate
30.2 g Fat
2.7 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 11,102 µg · 1388% ~
Vitamin C 16.5 mg · 21% ~
B1 (thiamin) 0.71 mg · 64% ~
B2 (riboflavin) 5.5 mg · 396% ~
B3 (niacin) 25.7 mg · 161% ~
B5 (pantothenic acid) 9.5 mg · 158% ~
Vitamin B6 1.5 mg · 105% ~
Folate 416 µg · 208% ~
Vitamin B12 135 µg · 5403% ~

Minerals

Potassium 644 mg · 32% ~
Calcium 78.7 mg · 10% ~
Phosphorus 600 mg · 86% ~
Magnesium 45.6 mg · 12% ~
Iron 12.6 mg · 90% ~
Zinc 7.4 mg · 74% ~
Copper 10.5 mg · 1054% ~
Manganese 0.60 mg · 30% ~
Selenium 131 µg · 237% ~
Sodium 839 mg · 35% ~

% 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.

Not counted: Lamb tail fat, Sumac. Not shown for lack of data: Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K.

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

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Nutri-Score

Not enough data. Nutri-Score needs its inputs for at least 90% of the weight; short here: Sugars. Left blank rather than guessed.

After the heat goes off

Serving

In hot lavash with sumac onion and green pepper.

Keeping · 1 days

Cooked liver only a day; reheated, it goes grainy.

Cooling and reheating

Do not reheat; it is better cold, in a wrap.

Freezes

Raw, cleaned liver three months.

What is left

Cold, in a wrap.

For a child

Liver is very rich in vitamin A; ask your doctor how often and how much a small child should have. If given, it should be cooked through and chopped fine.

Where to go from here

Grill & BBQ The method this recipe rests on
Lamb liver What it does in heat, water and acid
Red onion What it does in heat, water and acid
Bread What it does in heat, water and acid
Albanian liver Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Çöp şiş Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Adana kebab Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: aroma 70, umami 39, bitter 25.

Sweet 13
Salty 9
Sour 15
Bitter 25
Umami 39
Heat 5
Richness 18
Aroma 70

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