Pastirma

Pastirma, pastırma, pastourma, bastirma, basterma or basturma is a highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef of Anatolian origin, which is now part of the cuisines of the former Ottoman countries.

Etymology

The word comes from the Turkish: bastırma et 'pressed meat', pastırma [pastɯɾˈma] in modern Turkish. Some authors claim that this is related to the earlier Byzantine Greek word "paston," which is claimed to be a kind of dried and cured meat, but standard Greek dictionaries do not assert this connection, and gloss paston simply as "salted (meat)".

The word has been borrowed by other languages of the region: Albanian: pastërma, Arabic: بسطرمة (basterma)‎, Armenian: բաստուրմա (basturma), Azerbaijani: basdırma, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: pastrma, Bulgarian: пастърма (pastărma), Greek: παστουρμάς (pastourmás), Hebrew: פסטרמה‎ (pastrama) and Romanian: pastramă. The American cured meat product pastrami has its origins in pastirma via Yiddish: פאסטראמא‎ pastrama.

History

Cured meat has been made in Anatolia for centuries, since at least the Byzantine period, and called apokti, and some authors claim that pastirma is an extension of that tradition, of which there is reasonable evidence.