Tabbouleh Salad

You will always find a lot of variations of tabbouleh in restaurants and wherever it's served. Some are mostly made of bulgur, some with different spices, some without cucumber.

It is probably the most popular Mediterranean salad that you can find and it is becoming a real favorite in grocery stores around the world. 

The original recipe of tabbouleh came from the mountains of Lebanon and Syria. During the middle ages it was part of their diet. It was a very famous dish because of its health benefits and its great taste, even without any protein components.

Whenever someone asks me what's my favorite food, I always answer with a tabbouleh salad. In fact, my mothers tabbouleh. For me, she does the best tabbouleh recipe.

Everyone does the recipe the way they like it or how they learned it.

I always stick to my mothers recipe, as it's my favorite way to eat this salad.

She learned how to make real tabbouleh from her mother, my grandmother, who was lebanese.

My mother said she never used any written recipe back in the days, just making it the way my family liked it.

She would always do a double batch, one to eat right away and the other batch to keep refrigerated for the next few days.

She taught her authentic Lebanese version to her family, and now I am going to teach you!

This traditional salad is healthy and vegan with its roots in Mediterranean cuisine.

It is made with bulgur, parsley, mint and chopped vegetables.

Easy to make with just a handful of ingredients.

For me Tabbouleh is the perfect summer salad, light, fresh and simple.

The most significant thing in this recipe is the ratio of bulgur to parsley.

You will find a dozen different ratios, some use more bulgur than parsley, some just use a hint of bulgur.

But feel free to add more greens or grains to your own preferences. 

Tabbouleh consists mostly of parsley. It is considered as a parsley salad. There is no green salad or lettuce in it.

The way it is prepared in the mediterranean world, the salad should be all about the parsley, with just a hint of bulgur. That's the traditional way. 

Parsley is the star of this salad. Authentic tabbouleh uses a lot of parsley, which makes this salad so green.

Make sure to treat the parsley well, wash it with cold water first, then dry it with a salad spinner. You can use both flat and curly parsley. It works well either way, but I recognized that curly parsley offers some extra volume to the salad. For me, curly parsley is the way to go!

I have grown up eating a lot of tabbouleh back in the old days, and so I have grown up learning how to make one of the best tabbouleh recipes.

Adapted from my mom, but brought in some of my own style.

Another important Ingredient for this salad are tomatoes. Make sure to use fresh and ripe tomatoes. If they are too juicy, just remove their core before dicing. We want to achieve a quiet compact salad, not too watery.  Also add some diced cucumber, to add more texture and color. It will make your salad more refreshing as well. Some authentic recipes avoid cucumbers. Feel free to do it your own way.

Bulgur is another essential Ingredient for this salad. Make sure to use fine bulgur, the finest you can find. Look out for the smallest grind.Dont confuse Bulgur with couscous, it's not the same. Couscous is actually kind of a tiny paste, bulgur is parboiled cracked wheat. Bulgur doesn't need to be cooked. It simply just needs to be soaked in liquid to become tender.

For the choice of the olive oil, I recommend going for a high quality oil. You will immediately notice the difference in taste, compared to a cheap quality. For this recipe I used extra virgin olive oil, made from pure, cold pressed olives, which gives the salad a more intense taste.  For the Dressing the olive oil is combined with lemon juice. I always like to start with the dressing and place it in the fridge while preparing the other ingredients. In the meantime the dressing has the chance to develop its flavor. The dressing in this recipe is made up of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper. Very easy to prepare. Just whisk both together until well blended and let the flavor develop in the fridge. My mother always taught me to add the bulgur to the dressing while preparing the other ingredients. This way the bulgur absorbs the dressing and softens it during this process. In this recipe I boiled the bulgur in water, which saves some time. You can do both ways.

Enjoy this refreshing salad on its own or as a side of a bigger meal, or just as an appetizer. In the mediterranean world it's usually served into a lettuce leaf and eaten by hand. 

This salad is packed with lots of healthy ingredients and low in calories.

Parsley functions as an anti-inflammatory which reduces the risk of cancer and strengthens the immune system. Bulgur is a whole grin. rich in fiber. Tomatoes and lemon juice are a good source of vitamins and minerals.

You can make this salad one or two days ahead, keep it in an airtight container in the fridge. I prefer to do it this way, so the salad has time to absorb all the good flavors. 

You can make this salad one or two days ahead, keep it in an airtight container in the fridge. I prefer to do it this way, so the salad has time to absorb all the good flavors. 

At the end I still have a small piece of advice to share with you:

Make sure to check out your teeth after eating a tabbouleh salad, there might be plenty of parsley leaves left behind between your teeth. You could always tell when someone just ate a tabbouleh salad! 

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