Keledoş: The Bitlis Winter Stew Built from Dried Yogurt

Mehmet Özdemir
May 29
5 min read

Keledoş: The Bitlis Winter Stew Built from Dried Yogurt

Keledoş is a dense, tangy winter stew of lamb, chickpeas, crushed wheat, and mountain greens, bound together with reconstituted dried yogurt. It is a slow dish — simmered for hours in great cauldrons — and a communal one, cooked in quantity and shared. It belongs to the Kurdish cities of Bakur: Bitlis, Hizan, Van, Muş, and Hakkâri. An encyclopaedia of the region describes it precisely: keledoş is “prepared using dried ingredients such as dried yogurt (kurut), crushed wheat, chickpeas, and meat,” a dish that “evolved in response to the region’s climatic conditions and nomadic-pastoral traditions, becoming a nutritious food item that can be stored for long periods.” The intensive use of kurut — dried yogurt — is called “a method of food preservation employed by nomadic communities” and “a significant example of collective food production practiced in preparation for winter.” It is the same dried yogurt this series documented as torak — summer milk preserved into hard pellets — here dissolved back into liquid to build a stew in the depths of winter. Keledoş is the Kurdish preservation calendar assembled into a single bowl: dried yogurt, dried grain, dried chickpeas, all stored from the warm months and reconstituted when the snow comes. This is the eighty-sixth article in the series. The dish carries a Turkish geographical-indication certificate and is filed as “Eastern Anatolian” — but Bitlis, Van, Muş, and Hakkâri are Kurdish cities, and keledoş is a Kurdish mountain food.

Key Takeaways

• A dense winter stew of lamb, chickpeas, crushed wheat, and greens bound with reconstituted dried yogurt

• A specialty of the Kurdish cities of Bitlis, Hizan, Van, Muş, and Hakkâri (Bakur)

• Built on dried yogurt (kurut/torak) — the preservation calendar assembled into one bowl

• Given a Turkish geographical indication and called “Eastern Anatolian” — though its cities are Kurdish

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Keledoş / Hizan Keledoşı — dried-yogurt mountain stew

Region: Bakur (northern Kurdistan) — Bitlis, Hizan, Van, Muş, Hakkâri

Ingredients: Lamb, chickpeas, crushed wheat, mountain greens, dried yogurt (kurut)

Character: Thick, tangy, slow-cooked, communal — a winter preservation dish

Traditional Preparation

Keledoş is a long, deliberate process. Chickpeas and crushed wheat are soaked overnight and boiled separately until tender. Lamb is boiled until it falls apart, and then combined with the wheat and chickpeas. Mountain greens are added. The defining step comes last: kurut — hard pellets of dried yogurt — is dissolved in hot water and stirred into the pot, where it melts into a thick, tangy, creamy base that binds everything together and gives the dish its characteristic sour depth. The mixture is simmered slowly over low heat for hours; traditionally it is cooked in bronze cauldrons set over open fires, or in earthenware ovens, for the better part of a day. Finely chopped onion, sumac, or vinegar may be added. The result is dense enough to stand a spoon in — a thick, sour, intensely nourishing stew designed to feed many people and to fuel a body through a hard mountain winter. It is the opposite of a quick meal: a dish that takes a season to prepare for and a day to cook.

The Preservation Calendar in a Single Bowl

This series has documented the Kurdish preservation calendar piece by piece: summer milk dried into torak, autumn greens fermented into çortu, grapes boiled into molasses, fruit dried for xoşav. Keledoş is what happens when several of those preserved foods are brought together in one pot. The dried yogurt is summer’s milk; the crushed wheat is the autumn harvest, parboiled and stored as savar; the chickpeas are dried and kept; the greens were gathered and dried or salted. Every major ingredient is a preserved one. A household that made keledoş in deep winter was eating its entire year at once — the spring greens, the summer milk, the autumn grain, all saved and recombined when nothing fresh could grow. That is why the encyclopaedia calls it “collective food production in preparation for winter.” Keledoş is not just a stew; it is the proof that a Kurdish mountain community had planned, preserved, and provided across all four seasons. It is survival, cooked slowly, and shared from a single cauldron.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is keledoş?

Keledoş is a dense, tangy Kurdish winter stew of lamb, chickpeas, crushed wheat, and mountain greens, bound with reconstituted dried yogurt (kurut). It comes from the Kurdish cities of Bitlis, Hizan, Van, Muş, and Hakkâri. It is slow-cooked for hours in large cauldrons and is a communal dish, made in quantity and shared. Its character is thick, sour, and deeply nourishing.

What is the dried yogurt in keledoş?

It is kurut — hard pellets of dried, salted yogurt, the same preserved dairy this series documented as torak. Yogurt is strained, salted, shaped, and dried in summer so it keeps for months without refrigeration. In keledoş, the kurut is dissolved in hot water and stirred back into the stew, where it melts into a thick, tangy base. It is both a flavour and a preservation method — a way of carrying summer’s milk into winter.

Is keledoş Kurdish or “Anatolian”?

Keledoş is associated with Bitlis, Hizan, Van, Muş, and Hakkâri — all Kurdish-majority cities in Bakur (northern Kurdistan). It received a Turkish geographical-indication certificate in 2017 and is commonly described as a dish of “Eastern Anatolia.” That regional label names the geography while omitting the people: the cities are Kurdish, the pastoral traditions that produced the dish are Kurdish, and the dish belongs to the Kurdish mountain kitchen, whatever administrative label is attached to it.

Conclusion

Keledoş is the eighty-sixth article in this series, and it gathers two of the project’s deepest threads into one cauldron. It is a Bakur dish from Bitlis and its neighbouring Kurdish cities — the second food from Bitlis here, after liver taplama — and it is the fullest expression yet of the Kurdish preservation calendar, a stew in which dried yogurt, dried grain, and dried chickpeas are all brought back to life together. The world files it as “Eastern Anatolian” and stamps it with a national certificate, naming the mountains but not the people who have cooked this stew in their cauldrons for centuries. Eighty-six articles in, keledoş stands for the patience of the Kurdish mountain kitchen: a people who turned the problem of a long winter into a thick, sour, communal bowl, and who carried an entire year of preserved food to the table in a single dish.