What ingredients are included in Greek salad? Greek salad, classic recipe (5 step-by-step unusual Greek salad recipes)

Generous Greeks try to share useful and delicious recipes. Thus, a salad of the same name came to us from Greece, which gained wide popularity among Russians. Later, experienced housewives adapted the classic technology in their own way, adding and excluding certain ingredients.

Greek salad “Classic of the genre”

• cucumber - 1 pc.
• tomato - 3-4 pcs.
• olive oil - 85 ml.
• pickled capers - 5-7 pcs.
• bell pepper - 2 pcs.
• sweet onions (preferably purple) - 50 gr.
• lemon juice- 60 ml.
• soft cheese (such as “Feta”, “Brynza”, “Fetax”) - 190 gr.
• pitted olives - 18 pcs.

1. Rinse tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers. Peel each vegetable in a convenient way, leaving only the edible part. Chop the cucumber into half-slices, the tomato into half-rings, and the pepper into short strips.
2. Remove the skins from the onion, then chop into rings or half rings. Scald with boiling water to protect the dish from possible bitterness. Place the prepared vegetables in a salad bowl.
3. Now cut each olive into 2 parts (you can skip this step), and chop the capers into slices. Send to the main components. Combine olive oil with fresh citrus juice, sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix gently with a tablespoon. Work with the cheese separately. It must first be cut into 1 cm thick plates, then chop this plate into cubes. The cheese is placed on top of all the ingredients.

Greek salad with Chinese cabbage

• soft cheese (for example, Feta) - 140 gr.
• Chinese cabbage - 190 gr.
• sweet pepper - 1.5 pcs.
• apple cider vinegar with a concentration of 6% - 35 ml.
• Provençal spices - at your discretion
• olive oil - 110 ml.
• fresh tomato - 110 gr.
• olives - 90-100 gr.

1. Wash the cabbage leaves and tear them into relatively even pieces with your hands. Rinse the sweet pepper, remove the seed part from it. Chop the pulp into not very long strips.
2. Washed tomatoes, remove the stalks, cut into cubes. Drain the water from the olives, cut each fruit into several pieces. Cut the feta into slices first, then into 1-2 cm cubes.
3. Pick up a salad bowl, send the listed components into it, except for cheese. Prepare a dressing from apple cider vinegar, Provençal herbs, salt, and olive oil. Pour it over the mixture. Lay the feta on top of the whole mass.

Greek salad with minced chicken and garlic

• Greek yogurt (natural) - 180-190 gr.
• soft cheese - 140 gr.
• onions (preferably red) - 50 gr.
• minced meat chicken meat- 370 gr.
• tomatoes - 3-4 pcs.
• cucumbers - 2 pcs.
• sweet pepper (preferably pickled) - 2 pcs.
• garlic - 3 cloves
• olive oil - 40 ml.
• dill - 30 gr.
• sour cream - 160 gr.
• olives - 15 pcs.
• freshly ground pepper - to taste

1. Beat the minced chicken on a cutting board so that it acquires airiness. Salt and add ground pepper. Add the garlic cloves after crushing the spice in a press.
2. Put the meat in a preheated pan, fry until tender in oil. Then cool and place in a salad bowl as the first layer. Chop the onion into rings and add to the chicken.
3. Now drain the oil from the pickled peppers, cut the pickles into pieces of the same size. Place the onion on top and add the diced tomatoes.
4. Chop cucumbers, dill, and olives into a common salad bowl (cut into 2 parts). Prepare a dressing based on sour cream, olive oil, spices, and yogurt. Fill all the ingredients with it. Place pieces of soft cheese on top and serve cold.

• carrots - 1 pc.
• vinegar solution (table) - 10 ml.
• ripe tomato - 4 pcs.
• granulated sugar - 20 gr.
• white onions - 2 pcs.
• ground pepper - 2 gr.
• cucumber - 2 pcs.
• Fetaxa cheese - 100 gr.
• salt - to your taste
• bell pepper - 1 pc.
• red beans (dry, in packs) - 300 gr.
• olives - 17 pcs.
• olive or corn oil - in fact

1. First you need to cook the beans. Wash it through a colander, then soak it in a separate container for 5 hours. After the allotted time, pour out the water and boil the beans until tender.
2. Now rinse and cook the carrots, then let them cool and peel them. Chop the vegetable in any order (cubes, slices, half-slices, bars, etc.).
3. Remove the skin from the onion and chop the vegetable into half rings. Mix granulated sugar with vinegar and 200 ml. water. Place the onion in this solution for 15 minutes. Then drain the liquid.
4. Wash tomatoes, cucumbers and bell pepper. Cut out all inedible parts. Chop the tomatoes into slices, cucumbers into slices or bars, peppers into strips.
5. Now combine all the ingredients for the salad. Prepare the dressing separately: measure the amount of oil required for pouring, salt and pepper it. Season the vegetables with this mixture, top with olives and diced soft cheese.

Greek salad with prunes

• olive oil - 90 ml.
• Cheese "Brynza" - 160 gr.
• cucumber - 90-100 gr.
• purple onion - 1 pc.
• olives - 45 gr.
• Cherry tomatoes - 10 pcs.
• prunes - 3-4 pcs.
• sweet pepper - 60 gr.
• oregano - to your taste

1. Squeeze the cheese from the liquid and leave to drain. Then cut first into plates, then into equal cubes or bars. Soak the prunes in cool water for 2 hours in advance and dry.
2. Chop the dried fruit in any order and place it in the salad bowl first row. Place cucumbers and olives cut into half slices on top.
3. Now peel the bell pepper and chop into strips. Cut the cherry tomatoes into 2 parts. Place ingredients in main bowl. Chop the onions here.
4. For dressing, mix olive oil with salt and ground pepper, add oregano. Pour the mixture over the salad, garnish with cheese cubes and let stand in the cold for 15 minutes.

Greek salad with radishes

• olives - 12-16 pcs.
• tomato - 3 pcs.
• radish - 7 pcs.
• cucumber - 1 pc.
• apple cider vinegar - 40 ml.
• olive or corn oil - 90 ml.
• sweet pepper - 1.5 pcs.
• soft cheese “Feta” - 160 gr.

1. Wash the tomatoes with radishes, cucumbers and peppers. Free all vegetables from inedible parts. Cut the radishes into thin slices, chop the cucumbers into slices, tomatoes into cubes or cubes, peppers into strips.
2. Place the vegetables in a salad bowl and add the halved olives. Mix vinegar with olive oil, salt, and ground pepper. Season the salad with this mixture.
3. Divide the dish among plates and top with cubes of soft Feta cheese. You can replace the last ingredient with feta cheese or fetaxa. Serve chilled.

• lettuce leaves - 70 gr.
• soft cheese (feta is suitable) - 190 gr.
• olives - 180 gr.
• Armenian lavash (thin) - 2 pcs.
• lemon juice - 25-30 ml.
• cucumber - 2-3 pcs.
• garlic cloves - 3 pcs.
• olive oil - 60 ml.
• tomato - 4 pcs.
• bell pepper - 1 pc.

1. Free the olives from the liquid, cut into 2 parts. Rinse tomatoes with cucumbers, wipe, chop. Release the garlic from the shell, chop with a knife or press.
2. The cheese must first be shredded into 1.5 cm thick slices, then each slice must be cut into cubes. Tear the lettuce with your hands or cut into large sections.
3. Take a deep bowl. Pour in lemon juice, olive oil, chopped garlic, Provençal spices (optional), finely chopped dill (optional), salt and pepper.
4. Pour the resulting dressing over all salad ingredients except cheese. Place the feta on top. Now spread the pita bread on the table and place half of the salad on it. Cover with a second sheet of lavash, add the second part of the “Greek”.
5. Wrap the entire contents in a roll. To prevent the filling from falling out, fold the edges inward. Before serving, cut the “sausage” into portions 6-8 cm thick. Serve the salad chilled.

Greek salad with butter

• olive oil - 110 ml.
• fresh cucumber - 1-1.5 pcs.
• soft cheese "Fetaksa" - 145-160 gr.
• apple cider vinegar - 10-15 ml.
• Provençal herbs - to your taste
• olives - 12 pcs.
• butter - 60 gr.
• lettuce or Chinese cabbage - 50 gr.
• Cherry tomatoes - 5 pcs.

1. Rinse the cherry tomatoes, cut each tomato into 2 parts. Wash the cucumbers, cut off the tails, chop into half slices. Halve the olives. Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl.
2. Cut the lettuce leaves with a knife or tear them into relatively equal pieces with your hands. Add to vegetables. Melt the butter over steam or a water bath, mix it with olive, spices and vinegar.
3. Pour the prepared dressing over the salad, stir and taste for salt. If it is not enough, enter the appropriate component. Now remove the fetax from the packaging, cut into cubes and decorate the finished dish.

Greek salad with beets

• Cherry tomatoes - 7 pcs.
• cucumber - 1 pc.
• beets - 0.5 pcs.
• lemon juice - 25 ml.
• olive oil - 60 ml.
• olives - 8 pcs.
• lettuce leaves - 5 pcs.
• feta cheese - 90 gr.

1. Rinse all the vegetables and cut them into cubes, slices, bars or strips. Optionally, you can add bell pepper to the salad, freeing it from seeds.
2. Boil the beets, then let them cool and cut into cubes. Mix in main ingredients. Tear the lettuce leaves into a salad bowl and prepare a dressing of lemon juice and oil.
3. Chop the cheese into cubes of equal size, then place the cheese on top of all the ingredients along with the olives. Let the salad rest in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving.

Greek salad is consumed as an independent dish and combined with meat, fish, and side dishes. There are many recipes that we have reviewed in more detail. Choose the option you like, start cooking. Experiment with vegetables and seasonings.

Video: Classic Greek Salad Recipe

Greek salad is what we call the world’s most famous salad, which is loved and often prepared in Greece. For the Greeks, the salad is of course not “Greek” but “country or rural”, as its name sounds in direct translation.

We have already prepared Mexican salad - , Russian - , Korean or rather Asian - , Now let's try Greek.

I had to eat a Greek salad performed by an old Greek. You know, at first I was just a little disappointed when I saw what he put on the table. But after trying it, I realized that the most important thing is delicious fresh food, not cutting or serving.

In Greece, such a salad is usually cut into large pieces. For example, a tomato will be cut into 4, maximum 8 parts, and the cheese can be served as a whole piece.

Greeks put olives in a salad with a bone, of course, their own, Greek. They are larger than Spanish ones and have a more oily taste.

The most important ingredient in a Greek salad, in my opinion, is feta cheese.

The main herb in the salad is oregano and a little bit of basil.

Shallots, cucumbers, olive oil are also used in the salad.

In general, Greek salad is a simple version of a village salad made from the most basic ingredients that village Greek housewives have in every home.

Therefore, we will cook according to the same principle, and we will use what we have in the house from ingredients similar to those indicated in the recipes.

For example, instead of shallots, take a sweet salad onion or any onion. Instead of olive oil, any vegetable.

Olives, olives (in general, these are the same thing) whatever you have, preferably pitted. Instead of feta cheese, if we can’t find it, Adyghe cheese, feta cheese or something similar.

Add lettuce leaves, other spices, other herbs. It may not be quite a Greek salad, but it’s a very tasty summer salad, and we’ll still call it Greek.

Menu:

1. Greek salad classic recipe

Ingredients:

1. 1. • Tomatoes - 3 pcs.
      • Cucumbers - 4 pcs. (small)
      • Onion - 1 medium head
      • Garlic - 1 clove,
      • Sweet pepper - 1 pc.
      • Feta cheese - 180 g.
      • Olives - 100 g.
      • Basil - 0.5 tsp.
      • Oregano - 0.5 tsp.
      • Lemon juice - 2 tsp.
      • Olive oil - 50 ml.
      • Salt, pepper - to taste

Preparation:

1. First, let's prepare the dressing for our salad. Add lemon juice, oregano and basil, ground black pepper to the olive oil and squeeze in a clove of garlic. Mix everything well. The dressing is ready, set aside for now.

2. Cut the tomatoes into medium pieces.

3. We cut the cucumbers almost in Greek style. First, cut the cucumber lengthwise, and then, folding the two halves, cut crosswise into pieces approximately 8 mm thick. or even a little more.

4. Cut the sweet red bell pepper into medium pieces too.

5. Cut the onion into half rings and separate them, making strips.

6. Place all the vegetables in a deep cup, add pitted olives and season with our dressing. Mix everything carefully.

7. Cut the cheese into cubes, the size corresponding to the size of the vegetables.

8. Cover the dish with lettuce leaves and put our salad there.

9. In principle, the Greek salad is ready. But there is no main component here yet - cheese.

Place cheese cubes on top. Now the salad is completely ready. Fragrant, juicy.

Serve the salad and wine on the table. White wines go best with Greek salad: Sauvignon Blanc, Sancerre, Vino Verde. Use a strong lamp instead of the sun. Well, here you are in Greece and eating Greek salad.

Bon appetit!

2.

Greek recipe - Greek salad

Ingredients:

1. 1. • Cucumbers - 3-4 pcs.
      • Tomatoes - 3 pcs.
      • Bulgarian sweet pepper - 1 pc.
      • Onion - 1 head
      • Olives (olives) - 1 jar
      • Sirtaki cheese (feta or brynza) - 200g
      • Lettuce leaves
      • Olive oil- 100 ml (you can use any vegetable, but olive oil is better)
      • Half a lemon
      • Spices (we have basil, thyme, rosemary) - to taste
      • Ground black pepper to taste
      • Garlic - 1 clove

Preparation:

1. Cut cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet bell pepper into large cubes. We put the vegetables in a deep salad bowl.

2. Cut the onion into half rings, lightly salt and press with your hands so that it gives juice and add it to the vegetables.

3. We send onions to cucumbers with tomatoes and peppers.

4. Prepare salad dressing. Grind spices in a mortar or by hand. Squeeze some garlic, pepper. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon, pour in olive oil. Mix everything well. The gas station is ready.

5. Add olives to vegetables and mix everything thoroughly.

6. Cut the cheese into cubes. We will add it just before serving.

7. Serve the salad. Arrange lettuce leaves on a large plate.

8. Place chopped and mixed vegetables on the leaves and place pieces of cheese on top. You can salt the salad to taste, but keep in mind that the cheese is salty. I don't salt. The salad is ready, it remains to season.

Bon appetit!

3. Greek salad recipe with oregano, dill and mint

Ingredients:

1. 1. • Tomatoes - 300 g.
      • Cucumber - 2 pcs.
      • Sweet yellow pepper - 1 pc.
      • Black olives
      • Mint leaves - a pinch
      • Dill
      • Wine vinegar - 1 tbsp. l.
      • Vegetable oil - 3 tbsp. l.
      • Oregano - 1 tsp.
      • Salad onion - 1 head
      • Lettuce leaves
      • Feta - 200-300 g.

Preparation:

1. Slice the cucumbers. Do not grind, cut into medium pieces.

2. Since our tomatoes are small, cherry, cut them into 4 parts.

3. Place cucumbers and tomatoes in a deep cup.

4. Cut the pepper into thin strips.

We used yellow pepper to create a contrast of colors. Red tomatoes, green cucumbers and yellow peppers.

If it were summer and there were a lot of different tomatoes, I would take three different varieties of tomatoes and definitely yellow. Then I would take red pepper. It is sweeter, and again for contrast.

5. We send peppers to cucumbers and tomatoes. Mix.

6. Cut the onion into thin half rings and separate into strips. We also send it to vegetables.

7. Chop mint leaves and dill finely. Those who don't like it can do without mint.

8. Add finely chopped mint and dill to the general pile of vegetables, in a cup. Salt the salad and mix.

9. Add olives. Mix everything.

Preparing salad dressing

10. Take 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil or other vegetable oil, pour a teaspoon of wine vinegar here, if it seems that there is not enough acid, add more vinegar up to 1 tablespoon, you can replace it with apple cider vinegar. Stir and add half a teaspoon of oregano.

11. Mix everything well again. Season the salad with our dressing, leaving a little in the cup, about a teaspoon or a little more. Mix again.

12. Place lettuce leaves on a plate and place half of the mixed vegetables from the cup on them. Distribute evenly throughout the dish.

13. Cut the cheese into cubes the size of an olive. Place half the cheese in a cup with the remaining spoonful of dressing. Mix. The cheese looks very beautiful and the pieces do not stick together.

14. Place the cheese on a plate with half of the salad laid out.

15. Place the second half of the salad on top of the cheese. Carefully level it out.

16. Place the remaining cheese in the cup where the salad was, add a spoonful of oil, sprinkle with oregano and mix everything.

17. Place the cheese in the salad, distribute it over the surface and sprinkle a little oregano. In total, we used about a teaspoon of oregano for the whole salad.

Decorate the salad with a mint leaf. Our Greek salad is ready. We can’t wait anymore, let’s sit down at the table.

Bon appetit!

Write comments. Do I need to write the recipe in such detail? What else would you like me to change. Did you like the salads?

4. Video - Classic Greek Salad Recipe

There are no more than 130 kcal per 100 grams of lettuce. If desired, this figure can be reduced, especially when serving vegetables, cheese and dressing separately.

Quick navigation through the article:

Cooking classics of the genre

First, let's describe the Greek salad by classic recipe with a photo step by step, and for a snack we will leave secrets, tricks and variations. There will be a lot of them! Each stage contains the opportunity to do it differently - with the same appetizing, but new result.

We need the following vegetables -

let's estimate piece by piece to get the proportion for instant cooking at home:

• Cucumber - 2 pcs. (not small)
• Tomato - 2 pcs. (not large, variety with dense pulp)
• Bell pepper - 1 pc.
• Crimean onion (blue) - 1 pc. (the average size)
• Olives - 20 pcs., large, pitted
• Feta cheese - 80-100 g
• Oregano (oregano) - ½ teaspoon of dry herb
• Extra virgin olive oil - 2-3 tablespoons
• Lemon juice - 1-1.5 tablespoons
• Salt, pepper - to taste

How to cook:

• Cut tomatoes and cucumbers into large pieces (2-2.5 cm). You can peel the cucumbers if the skin is too hard for you.
• Cut the blue onion into rings or half rings. For a family where raw onions are treated with caution, the cuts are thinner, into quarter rings.
• We clean the pepper from seeds and internal white membranes and cut into large squares - about 2-2.5 cm.

• The olives can be left whole. Very large ones - cut in half.
• Place the vegetables in a large bowl and stir gently. Two large spatulas will help. Salt and pepper to taste, not forgetting how salty the cheese is.
• Whisk olive oil with lemon juice to create a sauce. Dress the salad and sprinkle with oregano - a pinch at a time, slightly rubbing the herb in your fingers.
• We cut the feta cheese into large pieces, comparable to slicing cucumbers, and place them in a picturesque disorder on top of the salad. One last pinch of oregano and the salad is ready - amazingly simple!

What else can you do with the ingredients?

Onions: pre-marinate. The simplest way- sprinkle the chopped onions with a mixture of vinegar (3 parts) and sugar (2 parts), add a little salt, let stand for 25-30 minutes, drain the juice and add the slices to other vegetables. Or cut the onion smaller - into quarters and eighths of rings. Or take two varieties - white and blue in a ratio of 1:2, or even 1:1 (especially vigorous white onions in this case should be softened by pickling). Or replace a quarter of the onion with garlic cloves. A nuance is important here: chop the garlic into small cubes with a knife.

Olives: cut larger or smaller, do not cut at all, replace with olives or capers (this is the case when something exotic for us is an everyday ingredient for the Greeks).

Cucumbers: naturally, play with the cutting. Or otherwise peel for large pieces, alternating between removing the skin in strips. It is especially quick to work with a manual vegetable peeler using a peeler: remove a strip, leave a strip, and so on in a circle. We will get a zebra cucumber, and the “back” of each piece in the salad will be white and green.

Tomatoes: take another variety, several varieties, or focus on cherry tomatoes, cutting them in half. Let's not forget about colors: for example, let's combine red and orange tomatoes. This not only looks more impressive, but also gives the salad meatiness, reducing the sourness - thanks to the rich and low-acid orange tomatoes. Plus, you can peel the tomatoes! Yes, yes, just imagine: large, juicy, immaculately soft large pieces - who would refuse this option?!

Pepper: again an ode to multicolor, which is most interesting when cut into thin strips. We also have an unusual idea in store. It slightly increases the labor intensity, but breaks all records for the delight of people who have tried this option. So, take a look at the red, fleshy, thick-walled pepper as an object for cleaning. You will need a sharp knife or a sharpened peeler. This approach is very popular in sophisticated southern cuisine, where the idea of ​​the Greeks has long been adopted by itself. The south of France, Italy, Bulgaria, Odessa, Kherson and Crimea: if they want to give a classic Greek salad an elevated and delicate taste, they start by peeling peppers and tomatoes.

How to replace feta cheese

Salted cheese, including goat cheese, which is easy to find at any market.

Or large pieces of processed cheese with a strong flavor (greens, smoked meats, but not tomatoes!), with a little more salt.

The option with Dutch cheese is also good, but make the pieces smaller. Yes, this will not be a pure classic. But who knows, maybe your family won’t like it much more? Husbands are often conservative, and they understand Dutch cheese and goat cheese much more than overseas feta.

Is it possible to add meat and what kind?

Personal taste rules the show! It's best to rely on the cheese you use: the saltiest one is fresh boiled chicken.

Did you risk depriving your salad of traditional cheese? Something smoked, well salted. But such a salad will not store well; the dissonance between fresh vegetables and smoked meats is too great.

In addition to meat, you can add mushrooms to the salad: not only champignons, but even the simplest pickled chanterelles. The main thing is to thoroughly rinse them from mucus and dry them. The perfection of a simple base and your imagination are the best team for creativity!

Submission tricks

Pros of serving in large pieces: those who don’t like olives can easily remove them. The same goes for thick onion rings.

Sometimes the salad even looks like the simplest cutting of vegetables with cheese, so large slices are placed on a dish - without much stirring.

Portion serving in Greek restaurants is often extremely laconic: you get a deep plate with no sliced ​​cheese. All the feta lies in a piece - right on top of the vegetable slices, leaving you to choose what to do with it.

Similarly, you can serve the sauce - in a separate container for each serving. There’s a convenient, everyday twist to this: as long as the salad isn’t covered in sauce, it keeps better.

Helpful advice

It is advantageous to fill the salad only after portion serving. This way you can keep the slices in the refrigerator longer if your family doesn’t get enough of the vitamin happiness at one time.

Olive oil, lemon juice and oregano- the classic Greek salad began with this sauce, which we reflected above in the recipe with step by step photos. But do not be afraid of other seasonings and herbs! The dish will easily accept coarsely torn leaves of curly lettuce and thin strips of wild garlic. You can add basil, thyme and parsley if you prefer.

And now let's smile intriguingly ... And fill the next portion honey mustard sauce. It’s easy to prepare the sauce: mild mustard (can be with grains), honey and olive oil in a ratio of 1:1:2, whisk. If the sauce is thick, add more oil.

The culinary hallmark of Greece is so inviting to variations that you will inevitably come to try less salty cheese, for example, by preparing a salad with lightly salted feta cheese. And here the third recipe for dressing will come in handy - with soy sauce, traditionally salty and rich.

Cooking, as before, is straightforward - beat the ingredients. We need: olive oil 2 tablespoons + soy sauce 1 tablespoon + Apple vinegar 1 tablespoon + mustard (medium or low) 1 teaspoon.

What else is added to the topping and dressings for Greek salad?

• Other oils (mustard, corn sesame - for the sake of flavor);
• Bread crumbs or fried salted crackers (crushed by hand with a rolling pin);
• Garlic pressed through a garlic press (by the way, one of the most despised methods from cooking gurus who consider cutting garlic at any opportunity the first sign of a master). Well, a guru is a guru, who else suits a peacock’s tail?!... You say the same! (c) And do it your own way.

Our carefully collected ideas for the culinary brand of Greece are waiting for additions in the comments. Which option do you like? Shrimp, pieces lush omelette, grainy cottage cheese, Chinese cabbage. All of them are also successfully friends with the universal Greek salad, the classic recipe of which with a step-by-step photo is always waiting for you at the beginning of the article.

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Greek Salad Encyclopedia: ingredients, dressings, rules, tips, the classic Greek salad recipe and its many modifications:

The most famous Mediterranean salad

Let's start with the incredible: in Greece there is everything except... Greek salad! No, of course, in numerous restaurants aimed at welcoming and entertaining foreign tourists, the staff has learned well that when asked whether they have the above-mentioned salad on the menu, they should answer in the affirmative and at the same time vigorously nod their heads to hide their own attitude to such a widespread myth. However, the truth is that what we call Greek salad, in Greece itself (as well as in many other Mediterranean countries) is called dozens of different names, among which there is not only the one to which we are accustomed.

The most common local "name" that a hero bears today’s article is “village salad” (in the original language – χωριάτικη σαλάτα, “horyatiki salad”), which very eloquently, accurately and completely reflects the essence of the treat served to guests: natural products, affordable, amazing quality. The second common name is banal and obvious: vegetable salad. However, they say that over the past few decades, the Greeks have come into use with another name for Greek salad - Russian salad: apparently, our compatriots order it en masse in restaurants, firmly linking the Greek dish with their own customs.

To avoid any further confusion, let's just agree that let's allow ourselves to make allowances for our own traditions and call a dish of fresh vegetables and cheese, which is widely prepared in the Mediterranean countries, Greek salad, however, at the same time, we will certainly keep a small notch in our minds as a memory of how it should be properly called.

So, let's go over the basic components of a Greek salad, shall we? Special The value of this dish is due to the fact that it contains almost everything that a person needs: proteins, fats, carbohydrates. A portion of a delicious salad, rich in taste and charming in its color saturation - and we can consider that a full meal has taken place. The salad recipe is optimal: such a lunch not only gives you a feeling of fullness for a long time, but also normalizes metabolism, delicately cleanses the intestines, and saturates the body with useful substances and microelements.

Ingredients for Greek Salad

Tomatoes

If you think that Greek salad can be made from semi-plastic, tasteless and odorless greenhouse tomatoes that lie in neat, beautiful rows on supermarket shelves, you are committing a crime against the entire Greek healthy eating culture.

A prerequisite for a real Greek salad is aromatic tomatoes grown in the open ground, preferably farm or village tomatoes. Ideally, tomatoes grown with your own hands in your personal garden.

There are no restrictions regarding the variety of tomatoes. Depending on your personal preferences, you can choose fleshy red tomatoes, juicy pink ones, rich black ones, or discreet yellow ones.

cucumbers

The rule regarding the method of growing tomatoes is equally true for cucumbers: the fruits should be fresh, firm, juicy and very aromatic. Limp green sticks, which are offered in abundance in modern stores, are absolutely not suitable for Greek salad.

If a crazy thought runs through your head to peel the skins from the fruit, take a good old broom and shoo it away. No self-respecting Greek would deprive cucumbers of their important component!

bell pepper

We remember again that Greek salad is a rustic and simple dish, and we pass by the ideal bell peppers that can be purchased at the supermarket. If you don’t have access to a private garden, your destination is a farmer’s market, where grannies with string bags, sturdy grandpas on bicycles, and lively, rosy-cheeked young ladies in colorful scarves come.

Choose elastic fruits with a fresh stalk: if it has wilted, this indicates that the pepper was picked several days, or even weeks ago. They can be used for stuffing or making sauces, but they are completely unsuitable as a component of Greek salad.

Feta

Do you want to make a Greek salad or a Greek-like salad? This point is very important when it comes to cheese. The fact is that, according to a decision approved in 2007 in the EU, only cheese can be called feta Greek origin made from cow's or sheep's milk. Anything you buy from stores with that name that isn't made in Greece is not feta.

Thus, it turns out that an authentic Greek salad can only be prepared using cheese brought from a distant and sunny country on the Mediterranean coast. You can buy real feta in supermarkets, but few people dare to spend a lot of money on something that has domestic counterparts that are no less worthy and of high quality. Which cheese to buy to make a real Greek salad is, of course, up to you.

Olives

To prepare a Greek salad, you will need quality pitted olives. When choosing a product, try to do without canned something in metal cans with attractive labels, look for small shops specializing in the sale of goods from Italy or Greece - these are the shops where you can buy pickled olives and olives of the highest quality. You want juicy, firm fruits that are a beautiful chocolate color with a prominent eggplant hue. The stuffed versions are good and tasty, but not at all suitable for making a real Greek salad.

Olive oil

Many well-known chefs believe that high-quality olive oil is a third of the key to success: it is it that unites disparate components into a single whole, enveloping them with the extraordinary spirit of the Mediterranean. Naturally, we are talking about extra virgin olive oil, which is obtained by mechanical pressing.

This oil does not contain any additives, has a rich taste and aroma and is extremely beneficial for human health. Please note that the color of Extra Virgin Olive Oil should not be close to yellow and amber tones, but rather green - thick, rich and grassy. The taste of this oil is very characteristic - it is barely perceptibly bitter, stunning with a mixture of salty, sour and sweet, striking in its richness, surprising in its subtlety.

Onion

Those in the know say that the perfect taste of a Greek salad largely depends on how you prepare the onions. Yes, yes, just cook it - there are a lot of recipes for Greek salad on the Internet, but only a few sources lift the veil and say that before adding onions to the salad, you should remove bitterness, harshness and anger from it. The taste of this dish should make you love the world and enjoy people, so you need to peel the onion, cut it into rings and put it in the marinade prepared in advance for a couple of minutes: a little hot water, salt, a spoonful of sugar. When removing the onion from the marinade, under no circumstances should we squeeze it or deform it; it should remain intact and beautiful.

Oregano

Oregano is the main Greek culinary herb, it is added wherever possible - the taste of many Greek dishes has an "oregano" accent. You can, of course, season the salad with Italian basil, French rosemary or Georgian cilantro, but it won't be quite a Greek salad, or even a Greek salad at all. Oregano (although it is nothing more than oregano) is a magical herb, do not neglect it if you decide to experience the true taste of an authentic classic dish.

Classic Greek salad recipe

Of course, there is no need to talk about any clear recipe with the exact amount of each ingredient, however, a certain formula-proportion can be derived. A basic Greek salad recipe is needed for orientation - once you feel the overall balance of ingredients, you can experiment and play with additives to suit your own taste.

Ingredients:

• 1 cucumber;
• 1 tomato;
• 1/3 bell pepper;
• 1/2 blue onion;
• 5-7 olives;
• 80 g feta;
• salt, a pinch of dry oregano;
• 50 ml olive oil.

How to make Greek salad

Wash the vegetables, cut them into large pieces. Place in a salad bowl.
Peel the onion, cut into half rings, and marinate a little if desired. Place in a salad bowl.
Add olives without brine.
Salt. Mix carefully.
Place a few slices of cheese on top of the vegetables. Even more correctly - solid - one! - hunk. This is an old village tradition. Different from the modern fast food style of cutting feta into cubes.
Sprinkle with oregano.
Drizzle the salad generously with olive oil and serve. Can be with a slice of lemon.

Dressings and dressings for Greek salad

The classic Greek salad is dressed with premium olive oil, however, variations are also allowed that will diversify the taste of the salad and make it interesting and unusual.

Try making a dressing using olive oil and lemon juice. You can add a little white wine and balsamic vinegar. A drop of honey, soy sauce, narsharab, a little grain mustard, and orange zest will make the dressing even more original.

The main rule for preparing salad dressing is that the sauce should be very rich in taste, but pleasant. If you have prepared the dressing, but you don’t like it (yes, you must try it first!), the salad will not fix it; rather, it will ruin the salad itself.

Ways to diversify a classic recipe

There are many options that allow you to diversify the usual village salad. In some recipes, it certainly includes lettuce. Lightly salted salmon and canned tuna, boiled cold pasta and baked bell peppers, cooked and raw lentils cauliflower, capers and anchovies, avocados and mushrooms - everyone chooses additives according to their taste and wallet.

By the way, another option is endive leaves. They are good not only for their extra flavor - they are great for serving salad in portions. It turns out unusual and stylish.

Serving options

Greek salad is so popular all over the world that numerous experiments in serving it became a natural progression of the development of this dish.

Many chefs of famous restaurants build “towers” ​​of vegetables, alternating them with cheese. It is also served in “boats” made from bell pepper or lettuce, in pita bread and on toasted slices of bread, in small glasses in the style of verrines and huge bowls, the contents of which could feed half of China.

Vegetables are laid out on a plate in bright multi-colored rows, alternated in appetizing layers in a salad bowl, roughly cut into a couple of pieces, carefully cut into small cubes - there are a lot of options for serving Greek salad, and it seems that every day chefs from all over the world come up with new and interesting ways to treat their guests with a delicious dish of fresh vegetables and delicate soft cheese.

5 rules for a real Greek salad

To summarize, I would like to write separately about the basic and very important rules, without which you will prepare anything but a Greek salad.

1. The ingredients for the Greek village salad are chopped coarsely. No, not just large, but as large as possible - they must hide maximum taste, plus it is unacceptable to spend more than 5 minutes on preparing the most ordinary everyday dish.

2. Do you prepare salad for yourself and your family? Then put your doubts aside– and mix the contents of the bowl with your hands. Ru-ka-mi! This will not only add soulfulness to the salad, but will also allow you to keep the vegetables intact without crushing or even crushing them.

3. When adding olive oil, you should not only pay attention to its quality (only the best, only proven!), but also to the quantity. The canonical Greek salad should be oily, very oily - no real Greek woman will spare olive oil, because she knows that after the salad bowl is empty, there will be a delicious “juice” from the vegetables, cheese and dressing at the bottom. Greeks dip pieces of freshly baked bread into this liquid and enjoy the extraordinary taste of homemade food.

By the way, for this process the inventive people of the sunny country even invented a separate word - “ladobukies” (“butter pieces”), which means a completely indecent, but incredibly tasty dipping of bread in salad sauce.

4. Don't cut the cheese. Limit yourself to one large slice, which is laid out on top of the vegetables. It’s more beautiful, tastier and more “Greek” this way.

5. Greek salad is prepared immediately before serving, and when served, it is eaten immediately. It does not need to be infused; the products should be as fresh as possible and just chopped.

The history of Greek salad

They say that the birth of salad occurs in the 20-30s of the 19th century. The fact is that tomatoes, one of the main components of Greek salad, appeared on the territory of this country only in 1818 - and it was after they almost instantly gained popularity and popular love that they began to be used in salads.

However, history claims that it was only a prototype of the modern Greek salad - let's say, its distant genetic ancestor, nothing more. At the time when the first tomatoes and onions appeared in Greece, these vegetables were not cut into pieces, but were eaten exclusively whole. Only almost a century later, with another wave of emigrants, one of the Greeks came to the United States, who figured out how to prepare their favorite dish in a slightly modified format - after cutting vegetables into small pieces.

In Greece, among other things, there is a proverb: if you know the village salad, you get to know Greece (or another wording: the village salad is all of Greece in one plate). Enjoy the taste of fresh vegetables and soft cheese and get to know Greece!

Greek salad according to the classic recipe

"Greek salad according to the classic recipe one of the most delicious salads. Composition of Greek salad includes a set of fresh vegetables and herbs, also includes olives and feta cheese, (fetax) or feta cheese. Dressing for Greek salad Use olive oil (preferably extra cold pressed), lemon juice, salt, spices.

The salad always turns out colorful and significantly refreshes the table. The combination of light and colorful ingredients is very harmonious. Greek salad is perfect for any occasion, and especially for the New Year, because it is in winter that you want something fresh.Prepared from fresh vegetables, this salad will add a touch of freshness both to the dinner table and to a festive banquet!

Classic Greek salad recipe

Ingredients:

• Cucumbers (medium size) – 2 pieces;
• Cherry tomatoes – 10 pieces;
• Olives (pitted) – 80 grams;
• Fetax cheese (feta or feta cheese) – 200 grams;
• Red bell pepper – 1 piece;
• Red onion – 1 onion;
• Lettuce leaves – 1 bunch;

For the sauce:

• Olive oil – 5 tbsp. spoon;
• Lemon – 1 piece;
• Salt, pepper - to taste.

Preparing the salad:

First of all, all vegetables will need to be washed and dried. Clean and dried vegetables will need to be chopped coarsely.

Step 1. Cut cherry tomatoes into halves.

1. Cut cherry tomatoes in half

Step 2. Cut off the ends of the cucumbers on both sides. Cut into quarters and cut into large triangles. If the peel on the cucumbers is too hard, peel it. I have thin-skinned cucumbers, so I use unpeeled cucumbers.

2. Cut cucumbers coarsely

Step 3. We clean the sweet red pepper from seeds and stalks. Cut into large strips and cut into cubes.

3. Cut red bell pepper into cubes

Step 4. Peel the red onion and cut into thin half rings. If desired, you can cut into cubes.

Red onions are sweeter and more tender than onions, so the recipe recommends red onions. But in my case, I couldn’t find red onions, so I used onions. To remove the bitterness from the onion, you need to pour boiling water over it and let the liquid drain. The version with white onions turned out very tasty too!

4. Cut the onion into half rings

Step 5 Feta cheese is an integral ingredient that is part of the “Greek” salad. This is a soft and salty cheese made from goat or sheep milk. The consistency and taste is similar to feta cheese. In my salad I used fetax cheese - it is similar to feta, only less crumbly. Regardless of what cheese you choose, it is placed in the salad in the form of cubes.

5. Cut the cheese into cubes

Preparing the sauce:

We will prepare the sauce from olive oil and lemon juice. You will also need salt and ground black pepper.

Step 1. Cut the lemon into two halves. We will squeeze juice out of one, and use the other at your discretion.

1. Olive oil and lemon

Step 2. Pour oil into a bowl (5 tablespoons) and squeeze lemon juice (2 tablespoons), mix, salt and pepper to taste.

2. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon

Assembling the salad:

Step 1. Place lettuce leaves on a spacious flat dish. Salad leaves must be washed and dried in advance.

1. Place lettuce leaves on the bottom of the dish

Step 2. In a separate bowl, mix tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and onions. Season the vegetables with sauce and mix.

2. Mix vegetables and season with sauce

Step 3. Place vegetables from a bowl on a plate lined with lettuce leaves. Place cheese and whole pitted olives on top. (For reference. Of course, it is more convenient to use olives that are sold with the pits already removed, but it is more useful to take whole ones. In such olives, the salt content is much lower and there are more nutrients).

Add cheese and olives

"Greek" salad according to the classic recipe ready! Bring it to the table.

Bon appetit!

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