Mangal and Kurdish Kebabs: Charcoal Cooking, Bread and Shared Meals

Charcoal grilling is part of Kurdish cooking in bazaars, restaurants and gatherings with family and friends. Published recipes and first-person accounts show how the grill, skewered meat, bread and accompaniments work together in particular Kurdish meals.

Mangal, manqal and the cooking equipment

Mangal commonly names the charcoal grill in discussions of communal barbecuing. Haringey Council uses the word this way in its 2023 account of local Kurdish, Turkish and other Middle Eastern communities. [1] The Goethe Verlag Kurmanji kitchen vocabulary gives manqal and biraştek for a grill. [2] Such names identify equipment; the ingredients, meat preparation and accompaniments belong to individual recipes and local cooking practices.

A Kurdish cook’s published lula kebab

Pary Baban’s lula kebab, published in Good Food’s April 2026 extract from Nandên, combines lamb flank and leg with grated, drained tomato, chilli and salt. The mixture is worked gently around broad metal skewers. She favours charcoal for flavour and texture, while the published method also offers an oven version. [3] This is a named cook’s preparation, with its own ingredients and technique.

Bread and the rest of the plate

Baban serves the kebabs with softened nani tiri or other flatbread, vegetables, sumac, fresh herbs and pickles. Her accompanying onion salad includes pomegranate, lemon and molasses. She describes dried nani tiri as convenient for a Newroz picnic: it travels easily and softens when moistened. [3] Bread carries the meat and vegetables together, making the meal suitable for sharing without a formally plated course.

Family knowledge and a London restaurant

In Sara Easa’s interview for The Jiyan Archives, Baban recalled learning from her grandmother in Qaladizê and keeping a notebook of recipes encountered during displacement. She described introducing kebab wraps alongside other dishes at Baban Café in 2008, before opening Nandine in 2016. [4] Her account connects cooking to migration, household knowledge and the work of a family business. She also stressed the importance of identifying her restaurant’s food as Kurdish. The interview documents a particular life and culinary practice, including adaptation as she built a customer base in London.

A documented social gathering

Haringey’s July 2023 parks policy acknowledged the cultural importance of mangal gatherings for Kurdish, Turkish and other Middle Eastern residents. It noted that shared outdoor meals could be especially valuable for people in small homes without gardens. The same document recorded restrictions on barbecues in council parks and discussed the difficulty of balancing social use with other demands on public space. [1] It provides a dated local example of how food, housing and gathering places intersect in the diaspora.

Sources and further reading

1. Haringey Council, Parks and Greenspaces Policy Pack, July 2023, PGSS1, pages 4–7; cultural and social discussion on page 6. Historical policy document.
2. Goethe Verlag, book2, Kurmanji–Arabic kitchen-equipment vocabulary; manqal / biraştek entry.
3. Pary Baban, Kurdish Kebabs, Good Food, April 2026, pages 92–96; extract from Nandên, including lula kebab, nani tiri and salads.
4. Sara Easa, The Taste of Liberation: Pary Baban and the Preservation of Kurdish Cuisine, The Jiyan Archives; first-person interview and recipe-notebook material.