Çorum Leblebi

Leblebi is roasted chickpea, sold across Turkey as the standard thing to chew with tea or rakı, and Çorum is where the good stuff comes from - it carries a geographical indication and the town has built an identity on it. The process is longer than the product suggests: chickpeas are graded, soaked, rested, roasted in stages over several days at rising temperatures in rotating drums, rested again between roastings, then hulled and sieved, with the whole cycle taking anything from a few days to a couple of weeks depending on the type. The result ranges from the pale, dry, double-roasted sarı leblebi to the softer beyaz, and shops sell them plain, salted, coated in chilli, cinnamon, cloves, chocolate or a hard sugar shell. Roasters in the old town will explain the stages and let you taste along the range. Çorum's other draws are the Hittite sites at Hattusa, Yazılıkaya and Alacahöyük in the same province.

What you'll find

• The roasting drums - chickpeas turned over successive days.
• The grading and hulling - the sieving stages between roasts.
• The shop range - plain, salted, spiced and sugar-coated.
• The old-town roasters - long-established family businesses.

When to go

Year-round; weekday working hours to see roasting. Shops are open daily in the centre.

What to expect

It is a snack, and the visit is a shop rather than an attraction. Roasting is not always in progress when you turn up. Leblebi is dry and hard - the double-roasted kind especially.

Nearby

Hattusa, Yazılıkaya and Alacahöyük are all in Çorum province, south of the city.