Şehriyeli Pilav.
Turkish Buttery Rice with Toasted Vermicelli
Şehriyeli pilav · say it: sheh-ree-yeh-LEE pee-LAHV
Şehriyeli pilav is the rice that sits beside almost everything in Turkey: buttery, faintly nutty from vermicelli toasted until it is the colour of a hazelnut shell, and made of grains that stay stubbornly separate. It is not seasoned rice in the Indian or Persian sense — there is no saffron, no spice, no aromatics beyond butter and salt. All the flavour comes from browning the pasta properly and from using stock instead of water. The technique matters more than the ingredient list: rice soaked in warm salted water, an exact liquid ratio, no stirring, and a long rest under a cloth that absorbs the last of the steam. Get those right and this is one of the best plates of rice you can make in half an hour.
- Gate
- Turkey
- Prep
- 35 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total time
- 1 hr 10 min incl. 15 min rest
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Easy
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 390 kcal
- Protein 8 g
- Carbs 67 g
- Fat 10 g
- Fiber 2 g
- Sodium 520 mg
Why this recipe works.
- The warm salted soak that Turkish cooks insist on — it seasons the grain from inside and strips the starch that causes stickiness.
- A liquid ratio calibrated for soaked medium-grain rice, not the generic 1:2 that produces mush.
- The cloth rest under the lid, which is what separates a decent pot of rice from a proper pilav.
- Uses butter and stock rather than oil and water, because in a dish this plain there is nowhere for weak ingredients to hide.
Ingredients.
9 itemsFor the pilav
To finish
Equipment
- Heavy saucepan with a tight lid
- Fine sieve
- Clean tea towel
- Fork for fluffing
Instructions.
Soak the rice in warm salted water
Put 300 g of rice in a bowl, cover with hot tap water, stir in the teaspoon of salt and leave 20–30 minutes. The grains will turn from translucent to opaque white as they hydrate.
Rinse until the water runs clear
Drain the rice into a sieve and rinse under cold running water, turning it gently with your fingers, until the runoff goes from milky to clear. Leave it in the sieve to drain thoroughly while you toast the vermicelli.
Tip Wet rice going into hot butter spits violently. Give it a couple of minutes to drip dry.
Toast the vermicelli to hazelnut brown
Melt the butter with the oil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, add the vermicelli and stir constantly for 3–4 minutes until it is a deep hazelnut brown and smells toasted and nutty. Take it off the heat the second the colour is right.
Tip It goes from golden to burnt in about fifteen seconds at the end. Do not walk away from the pan.
Coat the rice in the butter
Tip in the drained rice and stir for 2 minutes over medium heat, until every grain is slicked with butter and turns from chalky white to slightly translucent at the edges. This coating is what keeps the grains from sticking to each other.
Add hot stock and stop touching it
Pour in the hot stock with the salt and the pinch of sugar, stir once to level the rice, and bring to a boil. Reduce to the lowest heat, cover tightly, and cook for 12–14 minutes without lifting the lid or stirring.
Check the pot is dry
Lift the lid and tilt the pan slightly: there should be no liquid pooling at the edge and small craters should have formed on the surface. If liquid remains, cover and give it 2 more minutes on low.
Rest under a cloth
Take the pan off the heat, lay a clean tea towel over the top and clamp the lid back on over it. Leave 15 minutes — the towel absorbs the steam that would otherwise drip back and wet the rice.
Fluff and serve
Dot the extra butter over the surface, then lift and separate the grains with a fork, working from the edge of the pan inwards. Serve hot, in a mound, alongside whatever has sauce.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Soak the rice in hot tap water with a teaspoon of salt for 20–30 minutes, then rinse until the water runs clear. Skipping the rinse leaves the loose starch you just released clinging to the grains.
- Take the vermicelli further than feels comfortable — real hazelnut brown, not pale gold. It burns quickly at the end, so stir constantly and pull it the moment the colour is right.
- Add hot stock to the hot pan. Cold liquid shocks the rice, stalls the cook and encourages uneven, chalky grains.
- Never stir once the liquid is in. Stirring rubs starch off the grains and turns pilav into risotto.
- The cloth is not optional. Laid under the lid for the rest, it catches condensation that would otherwise drip back and make the top layer wet.
- Fluff with a fork from the edge inwards, lifting rather than folding. A spoon crushes grains against the pot wall.
Substitutions.
- Baldo or Osmancık rice → Arborio, Carnaroli, or good long-grain rice
- Italian risotto rices are the closest match in grain size and behaviour. If you use long-grain, cut the stock by about 30 ml since it absorbs less.
- Şehriye (fine vermicelli) → Broken angel hair pasta, or orzo
- Snap angel hair into 1 cm lengths. Orzo is larger and needs a minute less toasting, but it is used in Turkish pilav too and is not a compromise.
- Chicken stock → Vegetable stock, or water plus an extra pinch of salt
- Vegetable stock makes the dish fully vegetarian and works well. Plain water genuinely does make a duller pilav — if that is all you have, be generous with the butter.
Variations.
- Nohutlu pilav
- Cooked chickpeas folded in with the rice before the liquid goes on. This is the version sold on the street with chicken, and it turns a side dish into a full plate.
- İç pilav
- The elaborate one, with pine nuts, currants, chopped onion, sautéed chicken liver, cinnamon, allspice and dill. Descended from Ottoman palace cooking and traditionally the stuffing for whole roast birds.
- Bulgur pilavı
- The same method built on coarse bulgur instead of rice, usually with onion and pepper paste. Standard across southeastern Turkey, where bulgur is more everyday than rice.
Storage & reheating.
Cool the pilav quickly, spread on a tray rather than left in the hot pot, and refrigerate within two hours in a sealed container for up to three days. Reheat with a tablespoon of water sprinkled over, covered, either in a low oven or in a pan over the gentlest heat — the water turns to steam and rehydrates grains that have gone hard in the fridge. Microwaving works if you cover the bowl. It freezes acceptably for a month, though the vermicelli softens and loses its chew.
Serve with
Anything with sauce — a stew, grilled meat, or beans — plus a bowl of cacık on the side, which is how it is nearly always eaten.
The story behind Şehriyeli Pilav.
Pilav occupies an odd position in Turkish cooking: it is served constantly, it is technically simple, and it is judged mercilessly. A cook whose pilav comes out gummy has failed at something everyone in the room knows how to do, and the standards are specific — grains should be distinct enough to count, glossy but not oily, salted enough to eat alone. In many households it is the dish a new cook is asked to make first, precisely because it exposes carelessness.
The rice itself is a point of pride. Baldo and Osmancık are the varieties most commonly used, and Turkish cooks will name the growing region — Bafra and Ipsala among them — the way other cuisines name a wine appellation. These are medium-grain rices with more body than long-grain, and they respond well to the soak-and-steam method: warm salted water opens the grain and washes off loose surface starch, which is exactly the starch that would otherwise glue everything together in the pot.
The vermicelli, şehriye, is the giveaway detail. Toasting short pasta in fat before adding grain is a technique that runs across the whole eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, and it does two things at once: it perfumes the butter and it puts a contrasting soft-chewy element into an otherwise uniform texture. Beyond this everyday version, Turkish pilav branches out considerably — with chickpeas, with currants and pine nuts and cinnamon in the palace-derived iç pilav, with bulgur instead of rice in the southeast. And then there is the street version: pilav üstü tavuk, a mound of this exact rice topped with shredded boiled chicken, sold from glass-sided carts and eaten standing up, which is probably the single most common way anyone in Istanbul eats pilav.
Questions, answered.
Why does my pilav turn out sticky and clumped?
Nearly always excess surface starch or stirring. Soak the rice in warm salted water, then rinse it until the runoff is clear rather than milky, which removes the starch that glues grains together. After the liquid goes in, do not stir at all — every stir rubs more starch loose. Too much liquid is the third culprit.
What kind of rice should I use for Turkish pilav?
Turkish cooks use medium-grain varieties, mainly Baldo and Osmancık, which have enough body to stay distinct without collapsing. Italian arborio or carnaroli behave almost identically and are widely available. Basmati works but gives a different, drier result — reduce the liquid slightly if you use it.
Do I have to soak the rice first?
It genuinely improves the result. The warm salted soak hydrates the grain evenly so it cooks through without the outside overcooking, seasons it from within, and loosens surface starch. Twenty minutes is enough. If you are short on time, at minimum rinse the rice under cold running water until the water runs clear.
What is the cloth under the lid for?
It absorbs the steam that condenses on the lid during the rest. Without it, that condensation drips back onto the rice and makes the top layer soggy while the bottom stays dry. Lay a clean tea towel over the pot, put the lid on over it, and leave it 10–15 minutes off the heat before fluffing.
Can I make şehriyeli pilav ahead of time for guests?
Yes. Cook it up to an hour ahead and leave it in the covered pot off the heat with the cloth in place — it holds its temperature and texture well and arguably improves. For longer than that, refrigerate and reheat covered with a splash of water. What it does not tolerate is sitting uncovered, which dries the surface grains out.
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Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 19, 2026 · updated August 19, 2026