I am sure everyone of you as either already heard about doener kebab or has even had the chance to taste one their selves. But have you ever asked yourself what the history behind the doener is. Well you must have f not you wouldn’t be here right now. So for an start the word doener comes from the Turkish dönmek which means to rotate and kebab comes from the Arabic كَبَاب (kabab) translated it means something like roasted so if you put it together you get rotating roast.
The History of the doener kebab is rather long and also an highly discussed one because everyone wants to have his role in the history of such an well known food. The start of the history is around the Ottoman empire where stacks of seasoned sliced meat where grilled on an horizontal rotisserie. But if you have seen an doener store nowadays the meat is grilled vertically. This change came around the mids of the 19th century in a town called Bursa. Where Iskender Efendi who worked at his fathers store had the idea of roasting it vertically. The doener kebab back then was still served on a plate and not how it is now commonly known in a bread.
If you are German you might have heard that this is an German invention, well by a Turkish guest worker but in Germany. Well now the complicated part starts because there are three Turkish guest workers in Germany that claim to have made that invention. The Association of Turkish doener producers in Europe gives the kudos to Kadir Nurman who came as an guest worker to Germany and noticed that the people needed something practical and affordable to eat in their lunch break. So he decided to open a store at Berlins zoo station where he sold the meat with some sauce and a bit of greenery.
Nowadays the doener is one of the most popular foods in Germany each year more than 17 million are sold. And each day they produce around 600tones of doener meat. The doener has gained its popularity not only in Germany but all over the world in Greece something similar is the gyros and in Mexico they have the tacos al pastor witch also is basically the same. I hope that you now know more about the history of the doener and maybe you will think about it when you buy your next one.
Sources:
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-doner-kebab/
https://www.berlinexperiences.com/was-the-doner-kebab-invented-in-berlin-mythbusting-berlin/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab