Bulgur is parboiled, dried and cracked wheat — usually hard durum (Triticum durum) — one of the oldest convenience foods of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, Anatolia and the Balkans. Because the whole grain is cooked before it is cracked, bulgur needs only soaking or a brief simmer to finish, which made it a keeping-staple long before refrigeration. Nutty, faintly sweet and pleasantly chewy, it is the backbone of tabbouleh and kibbeh and an everyday pilaf grain across Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and the southern Caucasus. Crucially it is not the same as plain raw cracked wheat: bulgur is precooked, so it cooks in minutes.