Çortu Aşı: The Kurdish Sour Winter Soup Made from Spring’s Fermented Greens

Dala Sarkis
May 29
4 min read

Çortu Aşı: The Kurdish Sour Winter Soup Made from Spring’s Fermented Greens

Çortu aşı is a sour Kurdish winter soup built from fermented pickled turnip greens, cracked wheat, and bone-in meat. It is a dish of preservation — the greens are fermented in autumn and stored, then simmered through the cold months into a tangy, warming soup. It belongs to a distinctly Kurdish way of eating across the year. A Kurdish diaspora writer describes the related dish terxena — “dried fermented vegetable/herb disks, that bring the savory flavor of spring greens to a winter meal” — and explains that “terxena starts in the spring when these pungent concentrated disks are made and dried.” It is, the writer notes, “country food, that of farmers, shepherds, and villagers — where food is based on seasonal availability, industrious yearlong food preparation.” Çortu works on the same principle: capture the green of one season, ferment it, and eat it in another. This series has documented many individual Kurdish foods. Çortu aşı reveals the system that connects them: the Kurdish preservation calendar. In a mountain climate with long, hard winters and no year-round produce, survival depended on turning each season’s surplus into something that would keep. Çortu is what fermented turnip greens become when winter comes — and it is sour, deliberately, because souring is how the mountains preserved their food.

Key Takeaways

• Sour winter soup from fermented pickled turnip greens, cracked wheat, and bone-in meat

• A preservation food — greens fermented in autumn to feed a household through winter

• Part of the Kurdish preservation calendar — the same logic as terxena, torak, and basteq

• Sourness here is not a flavour choice — it is the chemistry of survival in a mountain winter

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Çortu Aşı — fermented turnip-green soup

Type: Sour winter soup — a preservation dish

Ingredients: Fermented turnip greens, cracked wheat, bone-in meat, onion

Season: Winter — from greens fermented the previous autumn

Traditional Preparation

The work begins in autumn. Turnip greens — the leafy tops of the turnip, often discarded elsewhere — are packed into jars or crocks with salt and left to ferment. Lacto-fermentation sours and preserves them, locking in the green flavour and creating a tangy, slightly funky leaf that will keep through the winter. When the cold arrives, the soup is made. Bone-in meat — lamb or mutton, often the cheaper cuts that give the most flavour — is simmered slowly to build a rich stock. Cracked wheat is added to thicken and bulk the soup. Then the fermented turnip greens go in, releasing their sourness into the broth. The soup simmers until the wheat is tender and the flavours marry: rich from the bone, hearty from the wheat, and bracingly sour from the fermented greens. It is served hot, in deep bowls, with bread. It is exactly the kind of dense, warming, sour-edged food that a body needs after a day of work in the mountain cold.

The Kurdish Preservation Calendar

Çortu aşı is one node in a system this series has been mapping piece by piece: the Kurdish preservation calendar. In a mountain climate without year-round produce or refrigeration, every season’s surplus had to be transformed into something storable. Summer milk became torak (dried yogurt balls) and motal (goat-skin cheese). Autumn grapes became doshaw molasses, basteq, and meşlor. Wild caperberries became pickled kepari. Fruit was dried for xoşav. And turnip greens were fermented into çortu, while spring herbs were dried into terxena disks. Each of these is the same idea executed on a different ingredient: catch the food at its peak, preserve it by drying, fermenting, or souring, and unlock it months later when nothing fresh grows. The sourness that runs through so much Kurdish winter food — çortu, dokliw, tirşik — is not an aesthetic preference. It is the taste of preservation itself, the flavour that fermentation and souring leave behind. Kurdish cuisine tastes the way it does because the mountains demanded it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is çortu aşı?

Çortu aşı is a Kurdish sour winter soup made from fermented pickled turnip greens, cracked wheat, and bone-in meat. The turnip greens are fermented in autumn and stored, then cooked through the winter into a tangy, hearty soup. It is a preservation dish — a way to eat the green flavour of one season during the cold of another.

Why is çortu sour?

The sourness comes from lacto-fermentation. The turnip greens are preserved by fermenting them in salt, which sours the leaves and allows them to keep without refrigeration. When they are cooked into the soup, they release that sourness into the broth. The sour taste is therefore a direct result of the preservation method — it is the flavour of how the food was stored, not a seasoning added at the end.

How is çortu related to terxena?

Both are Kurdish winter preservation foods built on greens captured at their seasonal peak. Terxena uses dried fermented vegetable and herb disks, made in spring and reconstituted in winter. Çortu uses fermented turnip greens, prepared in autumn. Both bring the flavour of fresh greens to a season when nothing grows, and both reflect the same Kurdish village logic of industrious, year-round food preparation for survival through hard winters.

Conclusion

Çortu aşı is the seventy-ninth article in this series, and it makes a hidden system visible: the Kurdish preservation calendar. Every sour, dried, fermented, or aged food documented here — torak, motal, basteq, kepari, xoşav, terxena, and now çortu — is part of one continuous practice of capturing each season and carrying it forward into the next. Çortu is autumn’s turnip greens, soured and stored, arriving on a winter table as a hot bowl of tangy soup. It is country food, shepherd food, survival food. The sourness on the spoon is the taste of a household that planned ahead, that fermented its greens before the snow, that knew the mountain would not feed them in January unless they prepared in October. Seventy-nine articles in, çortu proves that Kurdish cuisine is not just a collection of dishes. It is a calendar — a year-round system for staying fed and staying Kurdish on land that has never made either one easy.