Shish kebab or shish kebap is a popular meal of
skewered and
grilled cubes of
meat
Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...
.
It can be found in
Mediterranean cuisine.
It is one of the many types of
kebab, a range of meat dishes originating in the
Middle East
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
. In North American English, the word ''kebab'' alone often refers to shish kebab, though outside of North America, ''kebab'' may also mean
doner kebab.
It is traditionally made of
lamb but there are also versions with various kinds of meat, poultry, or fish.
In
Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
, shish kebab and the vegetables served with it are grilled separately, normally not on the same skewer.
Etymology
''Shish kebab'' is an English rendering of (sword or skewer) and ''kebap'' (roasted meat dish), that dates from around the beginning of the 20th century.
According to the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'', its earliest known publication in English is in the 1914 novel ''
Our Mr. Wrenn'' by
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...
.
The word ''kebab'' alone was already present in English by the late 17th century, from the (''kabāb''), partly through Urdu, Persian and Turkish.
Etymologist
Sevan Nişanyan
Sevan Nişanyan (; born 21 December 1956) is a Turkish-Armenian writer, fugitive and lexicographer. Author of a number of books, Nişanyan was awarded the Ayşe Nur Zarakolu Liberty Award of the Turkish Human Rights Association in 2004 for his con ...
states that the word has the equivalent meaning of "frying/burning" with "kabābu" in the old
Akkadian language
Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280 was an East Semitic language that is attested ...
, and "kbabā/כבבא" in
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
.
[Nişanyan Sevan, Sözlerin Soyağacı, Çağdaş Türkçenin Etimolojik Sözlüğü]
OnlineBook
The oldest known example of , probably originally meaning a pointed stick, comes from the 11th-century ''
Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk'', attributed to
Mahmud of Kashgar.
Gallery
File:Şiş kebap.jpg, Shish kebab
File:Kuzu şiş kebap in Ankara.jpg, Shish kebab in Ankara
Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...
File:Şiş k.jpg, Lamb shish
See also
*
Arrosticini
*
Souvlaki
*
List of kebabs
*
List of meat dishes
*
Satay
Satay ( , in the US also ), or sate in Indonesia, is a Javanese cuisine, Javanese dish of seasoned, skewered and grilled meat, served with a sauce. Satay originated in Java, but has spread throughout Indonesia, into Southeast Asia, Europe, ...
*
Yakitori
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sis kebap
Iranian cuisine
Levantine cuisine
Ottoman cuisine
Skewered kebabs
Turkish cuisine
Israeli cuisine
Jordanian cuisine
Iraqi cuisine
Syrian cuisine
Palestinian cuisine
Lebanese cuisine
Egyptian cuisine
Kurdish cuisine