Turkish kitchen tools make more sense when you see how people actually use them. A cezve is not just a small coffee pot, an oklava is not simply another rolling pin, and a sac is very different from an ordinary frying pan.
I grew up around many of these tools in my family’s kitchens in Turkey. Some belonged to my aunt and had already passed from one generation to another. Others appeared only when we cooked outdoors, made börek for a large family gathering, or prepared food slowly over a wood fire.
This guide is not a list of every utensil you can buy in Turkey. Instead, I want to explain which traditional Turkish cooking tools I have actually seen used, what they are good for, and whether you really need one in a modern kitchen.
Turkish Kitchen Tools at a Glance
| Tool | Traditional use | Do you really need it? |
|---|---|---|
| Cezve | Turkish coffee | Yes, if you make Turkish coffee regularly |
| Oklava | Thin yufka, börek and baklava dough | Very useful for traditional pastry |
| Sac | Gözleme and thin flatbreads | Mostly useful for outdoor or traditional cooking |
| Sahan | Eggs, sucuklu yumurta and small hot dishes | Useful, but a small frying pan can substitute |
| Güveç | Slow-cooked meat and vegetable dishes | Worth having if you enjoy slow cooking |
| Mangal and şiş | Meat, köfte and vegetables over charcoal | Excellent for outdoor cooking |
| Sini | Baklava, börek and large family portions | Useful for large-batch baking |
| Havan | Nuts, spices and garlic | Useful but easy to substitute |
| Pressure cooker | Beans, chickpeas and other legumes | One of the most practical modern tools |
1. Cezve: The Turkish Coffee Pot
A cezve is the small, long-handled pot used to make Turkish coffee. Modern versions come in stainless steel and other materials, and electric Turkish coffee machines are now common, but copper cezves have a special place in the older kitchens I knew.
My late aunt owned a set of copper cezves and always made her Turkish coffee in them. When electric coffee machines first became popular, I once offered to buy her one so she would not have to stand over the stove.
She immediately refused. In her words, “Coffee is made in a copper cezve.” She believed coffee made in plastic or steel coffee-machine pots tasted flat compared with coffee prepared slowly in copper.
She even wished she could make it over a wood fire. Friends from her generation often agreed. When she served them coffee from her copper cezve, I remember hearing comments that roughly translated to, “Now I feel like I have actually had coffee.”
That is a family and generational preference rather than a scientific taste test, but it explains why the cezve means more than simply “a small saucepan” in Turkish food culture.
Turkish coffee culture and tradition were added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. You can also read my guide to the Turkish coffee set.
2. Oklava vs Merdane: They Are Not the Same Tool
This distinction is easy to miss in English because both tools may be translated as “rolling pin.” In a Turkish kitchen, however, an oklava and a merdane do different jobs.
An oklava is long and thin. It gives the cook much more control when rolling a piece of dough into a very large, thin sheet for yufka, börek or baklava.
My aunt by marriage still uses an oklava for homemade börek, although she makes it less often now that she is older. Her explanation has always been simple: you cannot open a very thin, wide sheet of yufka properly with a short, thick merdane.
She considers the merdane better for thicker dough, such as dough for poğaça or pizza. For a large tray of handmade börek or baklava, she reaches for the oklava.
This is one of the clearest examples of a Turkish kitchen tool whose shape comes directly from the food it needs to make. You can see the same pastry tradition in my guides to Turkish pastries and Turkish baklava.
3. Sac: The Outdoor Griddle I Remember From Walnut Harvests
I do not remember my family using a sac in our everyday home kitchen. My strongest memory of it comes from somewhere much more interesting: our walnut trees.
Every October, harvesting the walnuts took several days. My aunt by marriage would bring a large, round, black piece of metal with her. As a child, I had no idea what it was.
When we stopped working for lunch, she placed metal supports over a small fire, set the round metal sheet above them and cooked gözleme directly on its hot surface. Years later, I understood that the mysterious black sheet was a sac.
She made gözleme filled with lor cheese and local greens. We ate it outside between the walnut trees after hours of work.
I still remember those gözleme more clearly than many restaurant meals I have eaten since. The tool itself was extremely simple: a broad metal cooking surface over fire. But in that setting it was exactly the right tool for the food.
4. Sahan: The Small Pan for Eggs and Sucuk
A sahan is a shallow pan or serving pan that works especially well for small hot dishes. Traditional versions may be made from copper.
My late aunt owned several copper sahans with brass-colored handles. When I was a child, she cooked eggs in butter for me in them. Sometimes she made sucuklu yumurta instead.
I once asked whether they were simply frying pans. She told me they had belonged to her mother and that the old pieces were much heavier than many newer copper pans she saw at the market.
She also worried about their worn inner lining and wanted a tinsmith to restore them. That memory is one reason I would not recommend cooking immediately in an unidentified vintage copper pan simply because it looks traditional. Old cookware needs to be in suitable condition for food use.
A modern small frying pan can perform the same basic job. But if you want the traditional presentation of dishes such as eggs or sucuk with eggs, a sahan feels much closer to the way I knew the dish growing up.
5. Güveç: Clay Cookware for Slow Cooking
Güveç can refer both to earthenware cookware and to dishes cooked in it. Large clay güveç pots were common in my uncle’s cooking.
He had several that were roughly the size of cooking pots. Whenever he bought a new one, he followed a family preparation method before using it for food. He rubbed the inside with olive oil and heated the empty pot once before cooking in it.
He believed this prevented a new pot from giving food an earthy smell. I treat that as his household method rather than a universal instruction, because modern clay cookware can vary and should be prepared according to its maker’s directions.
One of his memorable dishes used lamb from a butcher he knew, plenty of onion and tomato, butter and the clay pot. He sometimes cooked it for five or six hours in a wood-fired oven.
He was proud of that process. His point was that this kind of meal depended as much on slow cooking and the cooking vessel as on the ingredients themselves.
6. Mangal and Şiş: Outdoor Cooking, Not Just a Grill
The English word “barbecue” only partly describes what mangal means in Turkey. It can refer to the charcoal grill itself, but it also describes an outdoor meal built around cooking over glowing coals.
When I was a child, my family made mangal several times during the summer. We cooked beef, lamb chops and homemade köfte over the charcoal.
The vegetables fascinated me even more. My father put red peppers, whole onions and potatoes close to the hot coals. I would try to pull them away with a stick because I thought they were burning.
He would laugh and tell me to leave them alone. We were not going to eat the blackened outer skin, he explained. The vegetables needed time to soften inside.
For kebabs and smaller pieces of meat, metal şiş, or skewers, become another important part of the setup. You do not need traditional skewers to cook Turkish food at home, but they make charcoal cooking much easier when the food suits them.
7. Sini: The Large Tray Behind Family-Size Baklava
A sini is a large round metal tray. My aunt owned several, but one was enormous: close to a meter across, heavy and made from thick metal.
That large sini came out for important family cooking. During Ramadan Bayram and Kurban Bayram, my family used it to make homemade baklava.
This is the kind of tool that explains why translating everything as simply “a baking tray” loses useful information. A household making a very large traditional tray of baklava needs a completely different working surface from someone making a small dessert for two people.
If you only cook small portions, you probably do not need a sini of this size. But for me, a large sini immediately brings to mind holiday baklava and a kitchen preparing food for an extended family.
8. Havan: A Mortar for Nuts and Spices
The old article on this page called one tool a “stone mill.” What I actually associate much more strongly with a traditional home kitchen is the havan, a mortar with a heavy pestle.
My aunt had a brass havan with a matching brass pestle. She used it to crush walnuts and hazelnuts until they became fine enough for the food she was preparing.
Today, a food processor can perform the same job much faster. That does not make the havan useless; it simply means this is one of the traditional tools where a modern substitute is genuinely convenient.
9. The Pressure Cooker: Not Traditional, but Very Turkish in Practice
A pressure cooker is obviously not a uniquely Turkish invention, so I would not put it in the same historical category as a cezve, sac or oklava.
But if the question is which tools people actually use in a Turkish home kitchen, I cannot leave it out.
My mother still uses one regularly, especially for beans and chickpeas. Her argument has always been practical: legumes that can take a long time in a normal pot become much easier to prepare under pressure.
She often says she can finish a batch in a fraction of the time she would need with an ordinary pot. Exact cooking time depends on the legume, soaking, cooker and quantity, so I would follow the instructions for your own pressure cooker rather than use one fixed number.
Which Turkish Kitchen Tools Are Actually Worth Buying?
If you are building a Turkish kitchen outside Turkey, you do not need to buy every traditional object at once.
- Buy a cezve if you regularly make Turkish coffee.
- Buy an oklava if you want to roll very thin yufka, börek or baklava dough by hand.
- Consider a sahan if you often make eggs, sucuklu yumurta or small dishes for serving directly from the pan.
- Buy a güveç if slow-cooked clay-pot dishes appeal to you.
- A sac is optional unless you regularly make gözleme or flatbreads, especially outdoors.
- A large sini is optional unless you make large trays of pastry for groups.
- A havan is useful, but a mortar or food processor can replace it for many jobs.
Traditional Tool vs Modern Substitute
| Traditional tool | Modern substitute | What changes? |
|---|---|---|
| Cezve | Electric Turkish coffee machine | Faster and easier, but the preparation experience changes |
| Oklava | Rolling pin | Harder to roll very large, thin sheets of dough |
| Sac | Large griddle or cast-iron pan | Works indoors but changes the traditional fire setup |
| Sahan | Small frying pan | Cooking is similar; presentation changes |
| Havan | Food processor | Much faster but gives less manual control over texture |
| Sini | Large baking tray | Usually smaller and less suited to very large family batches |
What These Tools Tell Me About Turkish Cooking
When I look at these Turkish kitchen tools, I do not see a collection of decorative antiques. I remember specific people and specific meals.
My aunt refused an electric coffee machine because she trusted her copper cezve. My aunt by marriage still rolled börek dough with an oklava and cooked gözleme on a sac during our walnut harvests. Old copper sahans remind me of the eggs I ate as a child, while my uncle’s clay güveç brings back memories of lamb cooking slowly for hours. Holiday baklava, meanwhile, always makes me think of the enormous sini used for family gatherings.
Some modern tools are objectively easier to use. My mother would not give up her pressure cooker just because an older method looks more traditional.
That balance is what a real Turkish home kitchen looks like to me: old tools survive where they still do a particular job well, while modern equipment takes over when it genuinely makes everyday cooking easier.
For more context on the dishes, habits and regional traditions behind these tools, see my guide to Turkish food culture.