Tabbouleh
Tabbouleh is the national dish of Lebanon and is essentially a vegetarian parsley salad. It is made up of finely chopped parsley leaves, and mixed with tomatoes, mint, onions, and bulgur.
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Servings: 8
Calories: 117kcal
Equipment
- Pot and pan to cook grain
- Veggie workstation (discard bowl, chef knife, bench scraper, damp rag, cutting board)
- Smash garlic with knife or use a garlic press
- Planer zester and citrus juicer
- Measuring spoons
- Bowl
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 C water
- ½ C Uncooked whole grain: bulgur (traditional) but also couscous, buckwheat, or quinoa
- 1 C diced English cucumber
- 1 C diced tomato Keep skins on but deseed
- 1 t kosher salt
- 3 bunches curly parsley chop leaves only, dispose of stems
- ⅓ C chopped fresh mint leaves
- ⅓ C thinly sliced shallots
Dressing
- ⅓ C olive oil
- 1/2 t Ground pepper
- 3 T Lemon juice Lime is ok to use
- 1 T Lemon zest
- 1 pressed or minced garlic
Instructions
Mise en place
- Wash hands and the veggies and herbs. Best is the chop everything in advance so you are ready to dump it all in a bowl for serving.
Grain
- Cook the whole grain of choice so that they are not mushy, but a bit chewy. Once done add to the salad bowl and mix occasionally so it cools down. This salad is not served hot, you want it cool.
Salad
- Cut the tomatoes into comfortable bite sizes. Add to the bowl.
- Add the diced English cucumber (removing what little seeds may appear), and add the deseeded and diced tomatoes to the bowl. Add half the salt and mix leaving the mixture on the counter to marinate;. Essentially to draw excess water from the current food in the bowl.
- Meanwhile, remove the parsley leaves from the stems and chop those leaves very finely. This may take some time as you want them uniformly small, minced. Do the same with the mint and chop the shallots.
- [This picture shows the levels of chopping I did, upper right was after one chop, second had 2 chops, third had 3 chops, and the final was at the dicing that I wanted for the parsley. Check the knife for seeing how small the pieces were. The most common mistake is not making the parsley small enough.]
- Take the bowl and drain whatever water it has gathered in the salad bowl, and only then add the parsley, mint and scallions. Mix. well
Dressing
- Finally make the dressing with oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, and a smashed garlic that is minced after smashing (or using a garlic press). Season with the rest of the salt and pepper and drizzle over the salad. Using a wooden spoon mix it all up and let it sit to marinate. Before serving taste and adjust if needed.
Notes
Tabbouleh is the national dish of Lebanon and is essentially a vegetarian parsley salad. It is made up of finely chopped parsley leaves, and mixed with tomatoes, mint, onions, and bulgur. It is usually seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper with some variations for garlic or lettuce or using couscous in place of bulgar. These days once can often find quinoa tabbouleh.
This will stay in the fridge covered for a week. The parsley is a hardy herb that can stand up to the acid in the dish. For a while anyways.
There are variations where the starch is the feature, but I feel that really the parsley should be the featured item in this salad. Other variations I have seen is adding crumbled feta on top of the salad, or black olives.
I tried the dish with diced and shredded cucumber. The dish looked better diced and grated just would up being sort of mushy in my mouth. So dice your cucumbers. If you want to keep the peel on our not is up to you, I removed it.
Nutrition
Calories: 117kcal | Carbohydrates: 8g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 9g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 296mg | Potassium: 90mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 189IU | Vitamin C: 6mg | Calcium: 10mg | Iron: 1mg