Greek salad: ingredients, history, interesting facts.

Greek salad is a delicious dish of many vegetables. Cooking a dish has its own characteristics, which are expressed in the use of ingredients in large pieces, and not chopped. Salad is also called rustic, as all products are always at hand.

The recipe always includes lettuce, onions and sweet peppers. The essential key ingredient is Greek traditional feta cheese. Feta is prepared from goat or sheep milk.

The cooked dish is not always stirred before serving, but only before eating. Recipes for this salad are very popular for the festive table. Don't forget to include them in

How to make Greek salad at home

The salad is very easy to make. like a regular vegetable salad and only the filling is prepared separately.

Ingredients:

• small fresh cucumbers - 5 pcs.
• fresh tomatoes - 3 pcs.
• sweet pepper - 1 pc.
• red onion - 1/2 pc.
• pitted olives - 10-15 pcs.
• feta cheese (brynza) - 150 g
• garlic - 2 cloves
• salt - 1 tsp
• lemon juice (wine vinegar) - 1 tbsp. l.
• olive oil - 4 tbsp. l.
• ground black pepper - 1/2 tsp
• dried oregano - 1/2 tsp

Cooking method:

1. Cut a fresh cucumber into half circles.

2. Cut the tomatoes in half, cut out the stalk. Cut each half into 5 more pieces.

3, To make the Greek salad brighter and more beautiful, take peppers of two colors: red and yellow. Pepper pieces should not be small.

4. Put all the vegetables in a bowl and mix. Then transfer the vegetables to a dish in which they will be served at the table.

5. Cut half of the red onion into half rings and lay on top of the vegetables.

6. We are preparing a gas station. In a separate bowl, squeeze the garlic cloves through a press, add salt to taste, squeeze 1 tbsp from the lemon. l. juice, pour 4 tbsp. l. olive oil and sprinkle with ground black pepper. Mix everything. The gas station is ready.

7. Pour the dressing over all the vegetables in the dish. You don't need to mix.

8. Cut the feta cheese into 1-1.5 cm cubes. Put the cheese cubes on top of the salad and sprinkle with oregano.

9. Decorate the dish with olives. Greek salad is ready!

Greek salad with cheese and unusual delicious dressing

A new dressing for such a common salad will be interesting for you. Honey and mustard are added to its composition, which give

Ingredients:

For salad

• tomatoes - 2 pcs.
• cucumbers - 2 pcs.
• bell pepper - 1 pc.
• green salad - 1 bunch
• blue onion - 1 pc.
• feta cheese (brynza) - 100 g
• olives - 80 g

For refueling

• olive oil - 3 tbsp. l.
• lemon juice - 2 tbsp. l.
• honey - 1 tbsp. l.
• dry mustard - 1/4 tsp
• dried oregano 1/2 tsp.
• dried basil 1/2 tsp
• salt and pepper - to taste

Delicious dressing:

1. Make dressing in a separate bowl. Pour into a bowl: olive oil, lemon juice, honey, all dry spices, dry mustard, salt and black pepper.

2. Mix all the ingredients of the dressing with a spoon. It turned out a fragrant and spicy dressing.

Preparing the salad:

3. Bulgarian pepper is better to take a different color and cut into small pieces.

4. Peel a little cucumbers and cut into semicircles.

5. Cut the blue onion into half rings.

6. Cut fresh tomatoes into small cubes. Put all prepared vegetables in a large dish.

7. Pour the prepared dressing to the vegetables in the dish and mix everything.

8. Cut the cheese into cubes, add to the salad and mix again.

9. Decorate the serving plate with lettuce leaves in a circle.

10. Put the salad itself in the middle of the plate (circle of leaves). Put olives on top. Greek salad is ready.

Many guests at the festive table like to eat such a salad. Attentive housewives cook it for their family almost every day.

Video on how to make a classic Greek salad

See how easy it is to make a real and beautiful Greek salad.

The main thing is that you do not need to cut vegetables into small cubes, otherwise everything will turn into porridge.

Greek salad recipe with chicken and croutons

This recipe combines two salads: Greek and. It turns out very tasty and satisfying.

Required:

• sweet pepper - 1 pc.
• tomatoes - 2 pcs.
• fresh cucumbers - 2 pcs.
• chicken fillet - 300 g
• feta cheese (brynza) - 250 g
• black olives - 1 jar
• 4 slices of bread or loaf
• oregano seasoning
• olive oil, salt to taste

Cooking:

1. Cut the bread into cubes and fry in a pan in olive oil until golden brown. Sprinkle with oregano and simmer for 1 minute more. Crackers are ready.

2. Cut fresh vegetables into slices: sweet bell pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers.

3. Salt the chicken fillet, sprinkle with oregano, basil, wrap in foil and bake in the oven until tender.

4. Cut the chicken into small cubes.

5. Take a serving plate and pick lettuce leaves into it with your hands.

6. Arrange slices of sweet pepper on lettuce leaves. followed by a half-cup of cucumbers and tomato slices.

7. Then scatter the chicken meat cubes, cheese cubes and olives.

8. Top the dish with oregano and drizzle with olive oil. Ready.

How beautiful to arrange a Greek salad - video recipe

You can decorate vegetable salad by showing imagination.

The recipes presented above have great taste and attractive appearance. When preparing Greek salads, there are no specific rules, but there is only one thing - all ingredients must be of the highest quality.

Bon appetit!

When we asked our friends who have been coming to Greece for holidays from different parts of the world for many years in a row, what attracts them to this country, they answered us with a smile: “Clean sea, gentle sun, always fresh seafood, delicious wine, Greek hospitality, and, of course, the most delicious Greek salad in the world ... "

Indeed, in the catalogs of the world's best restaurants, along with the most delicious dishes, Greek salad is not at all the last place.

Greek salad, commonly called "horiatiki" - rustic in its homeland, got its name due to the fact that its components: onions, olives, sweet green peppers, as well as cucumbers, tomatoes and olive oil - these are simple and familiar products, which the Greek peasants ate.

It all started with tomatoes

However, tomatoes, however, like the salad itself, appeared on the table of the Greeks relatively recently.

It is known that tomatoes were brought to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, and they came to Greece only in 1818 along with potatoes.

They were brought to Greece by wandering Catholic monks. At first, tomatoes were grown as ornamental plants to decorate the monastic lands - their fruits were considered poisonous. And only since 1825 they began to cultivate for human consumption in almost all regions of the country.

At first, tomatoes were mistaken for exotic fruits. The Greeks ate tomatoes the way they used to eat fruit: biting off pieces from the whole fruit, seizing them with bread and cheese.

However, vegetables, even such as onions, were not cut - they were also consumed whole. Fortunately, the pale purple color of the onion was sweet and fragrant.

The history of lettuce

As a separate dish, the salad appeared thanks to one curious incident.

In 1909, a Greek economic immigrant who had worked for many years in America in a weaving factory went to his native village to attend the wedding of his nephew.

In a foreign land, he was very homesick for his homeland, Greek olives, olive oil, unique cheese, ripe vegetables that were grown in his village.

On the way home he had a toothache. At home, the damned tooth ached at all. My sister advised him to rinse it with ouzo - aniseed vodka. The sharp pain gradually subsided.

It was dinner time. My sister brought bread, olives, cheese, some vegetables for the table. But the tooth kept aching and did not give a bite of vegetables, as was customary.

Then a smart man found a way out - without thinking twice, he crumbled all the products into pieces in a clay bowl, added a handful of olives to it, put a large piece of Feta on top, poured it with rustic olive oil, and began to gobble it up with great pleasure.

My sister also tried the new dish, and she liked it very much. She decided to surprise the neighbors and serve it on the wedding table. The salad was appreciated!

Since then, rustic salad has become a favorite and main dish of Greek cuisine.

Cheese for Greek Salad

If tomato is the king of Greek salad, then Feta is the queen.

If you do not put feta cheese in the salad, then it will be a regular vegetable salad. It is Feta that gives the rustic salad a unique flavor, a kind of Greek charm.

Real Feta is made only in Greece in a special way from a mixture of 70% sheep's and 30% goat's milk. Feta goes through a very complex and long process of manufacturing and subsequent processing, developed over the centuries.

Homer in his poem "The Odyssey" tells that the Cyclops Polyphemus was the first cheese maker, which, according to the descriptions of the ancient Greek poet, was very similar to Feta.

The specific aroma of Greek Feta is the aroma of herbs that feed on sheep and goats grazing in the meadows of Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus, Thessaly, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, and the islands of Lesvos and Crete.

And only in these, and in no other areas of Greece, this wonderful product is prepared.

Feta has a piquant taste that cannot be confused with any other - tart, slightly salty, with a slight hint of sourness.

It belongs to the soft varieties of light cheeses. When cutting cheese into pieces, it should not crumble and leave no marks on the surface of the knife.

Feta contains no more than 43% fat and 56% moisture.

The color of Feta should be white, like Pendelian marble.

For all these undeniable merits, the cheese was given the brand "Feta", and no other white cheeses made outside of Greece can be called so.

This is how she is, the Greek queen of Feta cheeses, and she occupies a royal place in the Greek salad - at its very top!

Calorie content, benefits and some statistics

Greek salad is popular not only in Greece itself, but also far beyond its borders.

To the question of the famous catering company Grub Hub Seamless: “What dish do American clerks prefer for lunch?” over twenty-five thousand restaurants and fast food outlets across America responded: "Greek Salad."

And to the question: “Why do customers give such preference to Greek salad, and not to the same classic green vegetable salad made from lettuce leaves?”, It was explained that Greek salad contains more complete proteins, fats and vitamins, contains more diverse quality ingredients and amazing taste.

In Greece, there is no such tavern, restaurant, snack bar where horiatiki would not be served.

It is combined with any meat, fish or seafood dishes served on the table.

It can also be a great independent snack for any wine or other stronger drink.

The calorie content of salad in Greek and Russian sources is not the same: a portion of 200 grams among the Greeks is estimated at 415 kcal, and Russian culinary specialists have only 320 kcal.

A 100-gram serving of Classic Greek Feta Salad contains:

• proteins - 4.6 g;
• fats - 3.8 gr;
• carbohydrates - 4 gr;
• glycemic index - 30.

The Guinness record was set by the inhabitants of the town of Ierapetra, on Crete, by preparing the world's largest serving of Greek salad from seven tons of tomatoes, three tons of cucumbers, two tons of peppers and one ton of onions. The salad took 800 kg of Feta and 500 liters of olive oil!

Dressing for Greek salad: composition, recipe

The uniqueness of the taste of this dish is determined not only by the composition and quality of the products included in it, but also by the set of ingredients used for dressing.

The basis of Greek salad dressing is good quality olive oil, preferably cold pressed.

Greek cuisine rarely uses other types of bases, preferring to season all vegetable dishes with olive oil rather than mayonnaise or similar sauces.

Firstly, because olive oil contains a unique taste and aromatic bouquet.

Secondly, whole treatises have been written about the benefits of olive oil, starting from the time of Hippocrates and ending with the latest scientific research in the field of nutrition and medicine.

In Greek taverns, a classic rustic salad is seasoned with either a mixture of olive oil, lemon and herbs - oregano (oregano), in Greek - "rigani", and thyme - "fimari", sometimes parsley is also added.

Or, leaving the same base, add high-quality wine or balsamic vinegar. It all depends on the taste preferences of the chef preparing the salad.

It is advisable to make the dressing in advance so that it is infused and acquires the taste and aroma of spices.

So, for dressing for a real Greek salad, we need:

• good quality olive oil, preferably cold pressed (5-6 tablespoons);
• one medium-sized lemon, or wine or balsamic vinegar (to taste - 0.5-1 tablespoon);
• oregano or thyme.

Mix oil, lemon juice and aromatic herbs, whisking all the ingredients with a culinary whisk.

We leave the dressing for insisting, and proceed to cooking.

Classic Greek salad recipe: ingredients, how to cook

To cook horiatiki, as it is cooked by housewives in Greece, we need to have the following products:

• four medium-sized tomatoes (non-soft and unripe);
• one large or two medium cucumbers;
• one or two large sweet peppers;
• one head of onion, preferably sweet, pale purple;
• Greek Feta cheese - 100-150 grams;
• a few olives "kalamon" - 6-8 pieces;
• capers - 50 grams.

Now, attention! Step by step guide to proper preparation:

The main secret is that all vegetables are cut into large pieces and stacked in layers.

1. Wash vegetables and dry with paper towels.
2. Peel the cucumbers from the top skin and cut into circles of medium thickness - this will be the first layer of our salad.
3. Then we cut the sweet green pepper into half rings and lay on top of the cucumbers.
4. First, we cut the tomatoes into two halves, peel the halves from the stalks, then cut them in half again and lay them in an even layer.
5. Onions cut into thin half rings, washed in cold water, squeezed and put on top of the tomatoes.
6. Capers and olives are placed on top - as a decorating element of the salad.
7. We fill everything with a dressing of olive oil, oregano and lemon juice, it has already been infused and has acquired a specific aroma that will favorably emphasize the taste of fresh vegetables.
8. Salad before serving, do not mix and do not salt. We crown the dish with a piece of feta, drizzle it on top with olive oil and sprinkle with oregano.

Salad ready. Pepper, salt and mix before the salad is laid out on plates, just before eating.
Kali orexy! Bon appetit!

Everyone is well aware of the vegetable salad "Greek". Surely, everyone has tried the treat more than once, or even tried to cook on their own. It's really not that hard, and it's really fast. The products included in the "Greek" salad at home are interchangeable, they can successfully change for supplies that are similar in structure and taste. And this does not spoil the overall picture of the food in any way. On the contrary, perhaps it will open up new facets of the snack, exalt it from the other side.

Vitamin salad, which is beneficial for the body, you can eat at least every day. A wonderful recipe, quick to prepare, and also quite cheap for its price category.

Greek salad - composition of products:

• Tomatoes - 135 g;
• Young gherkins - 145 g;
• 1 large onion - 110 g;
• Pepper - 2 pods;
• Cream cheese - 125 g;
• Large olives - 80 g;
• Salt - 15 g;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• Lean oil - 35 ml;
• lime juice;
• Dry powdered oregano.

Greek traditional salad:

1. In order to prepare a classic Greek salad dressing, you need to take olive oil, squeeze the juice of a whole lime into it. Lemon juice can also be used, but it's more acidic and brighter than the mild lime that's perfect for salads.
2. Pour dry oregano to the mixture, salt, squeeze a couple of cloves of garlic, for piquancy.
3. Wash tomatoes, cut into slices.
4. Rinse the cucumbers, cut into wheels, peel the onion and chop into half rings.
5. Wash the capsicum, cut into thin slices, getting rid of the internal seeds before that.
6. Chop the cheese into pieces or cut with a knife.
7. Put the products in a salad bowl, add olives, pour everything with an oily mixture and mix gently.
8. If desired, before serving, you can decorate the dish with fresh herbs.

Greek salad - a real recipe

Often chicken meat is added to this vegetable salad, which gives the treat a calorie content. Such a dish can easily go for a separate meal, for dinner or for lunch.

Ingredients needed for 4 servings:

• Chicken meat - 180 g;
• Tomatoes - 135 g;
• Young cucumbers - 110 g;
• Goat milk cheese - 90 g;
• Olives - 75 g;
• 1 medium onion - 70 g;
• Lettuce leaves - 70 g;
• Odorless oil - 45 ml;
• Greens - 45 g;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• Salt - 12 g;
• Juice of one lime;
• Dry oregano - 25 g;
• A mixture of various peppers - 7 g.

How to prepare dressing for Greek salad - recipe:

1. First of all, you should deal with the chicken. Clean and dry fillets should be coated with a mixture of lime juice, a drop of oil, salt, dry spices and garlic.
2. In this form, bake the meat, about 35 minutes in the oven. After cooling, cut into pieces.
3. For dressing, you need to add a scattering of oregano herbs, a mixture of chopped peppers, lime juice, a little garlic, salt to the odorless oil.
4. Wash vegetables, cut.
5. Rinse lettuce leaves, tear into pieces, put on the bottom of the dish.
6. Peel the onion and chop into halves of the rings.
7. Chop the goat's milk cheese into cubes.
8. Put all the products on lettuce leaves, add olives, lay out chicken pieces, season the salad with prepared sauce. Mix carefully.

How to cook and what to fill with Greek salad

What kind of cheese is used to make Greek salad? In the original, of course, this is Feta, but any other goat milk product will do in this recipe.

Products required for cooking:

• Cherry - 145 g;
• Fresh cucumbers - 125 g;
• Pepper - 110 g;
• Goat cheese - 90 g;
• Olives - 70 g;
• Salt - 11 g;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• Lean oil - 35 ml;
• Wine vinegar - 20 ml.

Greek salad - preparation:

1. Wash vegetables, tomatoes can be added whole or cut in half, cucumbers in large slices.
2. Release the pepper from the stalk, cut into strips.
3. Combine all the ingredients, add salt, season with a mixture of oil and wine vinegar, at the end, before serving, mix well.

Perhaps you will like it.

Greek salad at home - recipe

A salad with this composition is low-calorie and is suitable for people who are watching their weight. So eat as much as you like!

Ingredients (for 4 servings):

• Cherry - 140 g;
• Cucumbers - 135 g;
• Iceberg head - 120 g;
• Feta cheese - 90 g;
• Celery - 155 g;
• Olives - 70 g;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• Juice of half a lime;
• Odorless lean oil - 45 ml;
• Salt - 13 g;
• A mixture of allspice -7 g;
• Dry oregano - 17 g;
• The brine in which the olives were marinated - 20 ml.

How to prepare a dish and sauce for Greek salad - recipe:

1. Rinse the celery and cut into pieces.
2. Rinse the cherry, we will add them whole.
3. Wash cucumbers, cut into slices
4. Rinse lettuce leaves, dry, arbitrarily break.
5. Crumble the cheese, remove the olives from the jar.
6. Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl.
7. For dressing, you need to dissolve salt in the olive marinade, sprinkle with a mixture of peppers, add oregano, vegetable oil, grated garlic and squeeze the juice of half a lime.
8. Drizzle dressing over salad, toss to combine.

Greek salad with potatoes

This dish is a wonderful option for a treat that you can get enough of. The fact is that with the addition of potatoes, the Greek salad gains calories and becomes not as light as in the traditional version.

Salad Ingredients (for 4 servings):

• Tomatoes - 155 g;
• Cucumbers - 100 g;
• Potatoes - 50 g;
• 1 large red onion - 95 g;
• Cream cheese - 75 g;
• Sweet pepper - 125 g;
• Lean oil - 55 ml;
• Arugula leaves - 120 g;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• Juice of 1/2 lemon;
• Salt - 13 g.

Cooking in order:

1. Potatoes need to be boiled until half cooked, then cut into large cubes and fried in vegetable oil on all sides until crispy.
2. Wash the sweet pepper, chop it into strips, fry for a couple of minutes in the oil in which the potatoes were cooked. This is done to soften it up a bit.
3. Salad onion peeled, cut into rings.
4. Wash tomatoes and cucumbers, cut into large slices. Cheese - cubes.
5. Rinse arugula leaves under running cold water, then dry, put in a plate. Put potatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and cheese there.
6. Greek Salad Dressing: Combine lemon juice, garlic and salt with butter. Pour the mixture over the contents of the bowl and stir.

"Greek" salad is an incredibly tasty and healthy salad. A wonderful recipe, invented in Greece, flew around many countries and fell in love with their inhabitants. The balance of taste sensations is so good that simple products come together and create a chic cold appetizer.

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: Greece has everything except… Greek salad! No, of course, in numerous restaurants aimed at welcoming and entertaining foreign tourists, the staff have learned well that the question of whether they have the above-named salad on the menu should be answered in the affirmative and at the same time vigorously nod your head to hide your own attitude to such a widespread myth. However, the truth is that what we call Greek salad, in Greece itself (as well as many other Mediterranean countries) is called dozens of different names, among which there is not only the one we are used to.

The most common local "name" a hero has of today's article - "village salad" (in the original language - χωριάτικη σαλάτα, "salad horiatiki"), which very eloquently, accurately and fully reflects the essence of the treat served to guests: natural products, affordable, delicious in 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 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 through the basic components of a Greek salad? 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 assume that a full meal has taken place. The salad recipe is optimal: such a dinner not only gives a feeling of satiety for a long time, but also normalizes metabolism, gently cleanses the intestines, saturates the body with useful substances and microelements.

Greek Salad Ingredients

Tomatoes

If you think that a Greek salad can be made from semi-plastic greenhouse tomatoes without taste and smell, which lie in even beautiful rows on supermarket shelves, you are committing a crime against the entire Greek culture of healthy eating.

A prerequisite for a real Greek salad is fragrant tomatoes grown in open ground, better - farm or village. Ideal - tomatoes grown with their own hands in their own garden.

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

cucumbers

The rule concerning the method of growing tomatoes is equally true for cucumbers: the fruits must be fresh, firm, juicy and very fragrant. Sluggish green sticks, which modern stores offer in abundance, are categorically not suitable for Greek salad.

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

bell pepper

Again, remember that Greek salad is a rustic and simple dish, and we pass by the perfect bell peppers, which can be purchased at the supermarket. In the absence of access to personal gardening, the destination is the farmers' market, where grannies with string bags, strong grandfathers on bicycles, lively ruddy young ladies in colorful scarves come together.

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

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 the decision approved in 2007 in the EU, only cheese of Greek origin, made from cow's or sheep's milk, can be called feta. 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, it is more green - thick, rich and grassy. The taste of this oil is very characteristic - it is barely perceptibly bitter, deafening with a mixture of salty, sour and sweet, striking with richness, surprising with subtlety.

Onion

Knowledgeable people say that a lot of the perfect taste of Greek salad depends on how you cook the onion. Yes, yes, just cook - there are a lot of recipes for Greek salad on the Internet, but only a few sources open the veil and say that before adding onions to the salad, bitterness, stiffness and anger should be removed from it. The taste of this dish should make you love the world and rejoice at people, so the onion must be peeled, cut into rings and put for a couple of minutes in the marinade prepared in advance: a little hot water, salt, a spoonful of sugar. When taking the onion out of the marinade, in no case do we squeeze it and do not deform it, it should remain whole and beautiful.

oregano

Oregano is a staple Greek culinary herb and is added wherever possible - many Greek dishes have an "oregano" flavor to them. Of course, you can season the salad with Italian basil, French rosemary or Georgian cilantro, but it will not be quite a Greek salad, or even not 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, it is not necessary to talk about some clear recipe with the exact amount of each ingredient, however, a certain formula-proportion can be deduced. The basic recipe for Greek salad is needed for orientation - having felt the overall balance of the components, you can experiment and play with additives to your own taste.

Ingredients:

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

How to cook Greek salad

My vegetables, cut them into large pieces. Put in a salad bowl.
Peel the onion, cut into half rings, pickle a little if desired. Put in a salad bowl.
Add olives without brine.
Salt. Mix carefully.
Put a few slices of cheese on top of the vegetables. Even more correctly - solid - one! - a chunk. It's an old village tradition. It differs from the modern fast food style of cutting feta into cubes.
Sprinkle with oregano.
Drizzle the salad generously with olive oil and serve. Maybe with a slice of lemon.

Greek salad dressings and dressings

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

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

The main rule for making salad dressing is that the sauce should be very rich in taste, but pleasant. If you have prepared a dressing, but you don’t like it (yes, 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 rustic salad. In some recipes, it certainly includes leaf lettuce. Lightly salted salmon and canned tuna, boiled cold pasta and baked bell peppers, cooked lentils and raw 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 an additional flavor note - they are very cool to serve a salad in a portion. It turns out unusual and stylish.

Feed options

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

Many chefs of famous restaurants build "turrets" of vegetables, alternating them with cheese. There is a serving in “boats” of bell pepper or leaf lettuce, in pita bread and on toasted slices of bread, in small glasses in the manner of verrins and huge bowls, the contents of which can 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 parts, neatly 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 Earth come up with new and new interesting ways to treat their guests with a delicious dish of fresh vegetables and tender soft cheese.

5 rules of real Greek salad

Summing up, I would like to write separately about the basic and very important rules, without which you will cook anything, but not a Greek salad.

1. The ingredients for the rustic Greek salad are cut into large pieces. No, not just large, but as large as possible - they should hide the maximum taste in themselves, plus it is unacceptable to spend more than 5 minutes of time preparing the most ordinary everyday dish.

2. Do you make 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 also allow you to keep the vegetables whole 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 on its quantity. The canonical Greek salad should be oily, very oily - no real Greek woman would spare olive oil, because she knows that after the salad bowl is empty, a delicious "juice" from vegetables, cheese and dressing will remain at its bottom. Greeks dip slices 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 a sunny country even invented a separate word - “ladobukies” (“oil pieces”), which means a completely indecent, but incredibly savory soaking of bread in salad sauce.

4. Don't cut the cheese. Limit yourself to one large slice, which is laid out on top of vegetables. So more beautiful, tastier and more "Greek".

5. Greek salad is prepared immediately before being served, and after serving, it is eaten immediately. He does not need to infuse, the products should be as fresh as possible and just chopped.

The History of Greek Salad

They say that the birth of lettuce falls on 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, no 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 guessed to cook their favorite dish in a slightly modified format - after cutting vegetables into small pieces.

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

Greek salad is the perfect way to cook raw vegetables in a delicious and original way. The main secret of this dish is that it is prepared just before serving: then the ingredients retain their freshness and appetizing appearance. The classic Greek salad recipe can be changed by adding new ingredients and using all kinds of sauces.

Greek salad - a classic recipe with feta cheese

The most popular recipe includes a standard set of ingredients and a dressing of oil and lemon, which is ideally combined with vegetables.

Required:

• 2 medium cucumbers;
• 1 sweet pepper;
• 1 onion;
• 100 g fetaks;
• 2 large tomatoes;
• 0.5 lemon;
• 20 pitted olives;
• 60 ml of olive oil;
• 3 g oregano;
• salt and black pepper to taste.

Stages of preparation.

1. Vegetables are thoroughly washed and dried.
2. Cucumbers and tomatoes are cut into large cubes, pepper - into strips, onions - into thin half rings.
3. The vegetables are evenly distributed in the salad bowl.
4. Juice is squeezed out of half a lemon. Mix it with oil and oregano.
5. Salad is salted, peppered and watered with dressing. Stir.
6. Fetaxa is cut into cubes and laid out beautifully on top of vegetables.
7. Olives are cut in half lengthwise and decorate the salad with them.

Note to the hostess: to make the appetizer look more spectacular, you can take half of the bell peppers of different colors.

Salad like in Greece

The peculiarity of this Greek salad is that the vegetables are cut very large and do not mix. All ingredients for this dish must be chilled.

Required products:

• 2 medium tomatoes;
• half an onion (purple);
• 1 Bulgarian pepper;
• 1 cucumber;
• 100 g feta;
• 12 olives with pits;
• 2 g oregano;
• 60 ml of olive oil;
• 2 ml of table vinegar;
• 4 lettuce leaves.

Cooking technology.

1. Peeled cucumber is cut into larger circles, pepper - in large cubes, onion - in half rings.
2. Tomatoes are cut into 6 pieces.
3. The bottom of a deep cup is lined with lettuce leaves.
4. Cucumbers are laid on them, tomatoes and peppers are placed on top.
5. In a separate bowl, combine onion and oregano, sprinkle with vinegar, mix and leave for a quarter of an hour.
6. Spread the onion mixture over the tomatoes.
7. A whole piece of feta is placed on a salad, olives are laid out around.
8. The dish is poured with olive oil, without stirring.

Greek salad with chicken and croutons

Adding crackers and meat to a Greek salad with fetax will give a traditional dish new notes and make it more nutritious.

Grocery list:

• 400 g boiled chicken;
• 2 small cucumbers;
• 2 tomatoes;
• half a bell pepper;
• 0.5 bulbs;
• 150 g of lettuce;
• 100 g fetaks;
• 100 g of white crackers;
• 70 g olives;
• salt, oil for dressing, a mixture of Provence herbs to taste.

Recipe.

1. Clean and dry lettuce leaves are torn by hand and spread on a flat plate.
2. Cut the peeled onion into half rings, the rest of the vegetables into large pieces.
3. Vegetables are placed on leaf lettuce, salted.
4. Fetax is cut into cubes, chicken - into small pieces.
5. Meat and olives are laid out between the vegetables, on top - fetax and crackers.
6. The salad is seasoned with herbs and drizzled with oil.

Recipe with cheese and olives

Thanks to the addition of cheese, this salad turns out to be more satisfying and piquant.

Products include:

• 1 cucumber;
• 1 tomato;
• 150 g of salted cheese;
• 100 g pitted olives;
• 15 g dill;
• 40 ml olive oil.

Step by step recipe.

1. Cheese cut into cubes and put in a bowl.
2. Add whole olives.
3. Tomato and cucumber are also cut into squares and placed on top of the olives.
4. Add chopped dill.
5. All ingredients are poured with oil and mixed.

Classic recipe with pine nuts

Nuts significantly increase the nutritional value of the salad and give it an original taste.

Ingredients:

• 2 tomatoes;
• 1 yellow or green pepper;
• 2 cucumbers;
• 40 ml of olive oil;
• 20 g mustard;
• 100 g of pine nuts without shell;
• 2 g salt.

Cooking steps.

1. Cucumbers are cut into thick half-rings, peppers - into long sticks, tomatoes - into larger slices.
2. The vegetables are mixed.
3. Nuts are sprinkled on top.
4. Greek salad with nuts is dressed with a mixture of olive oil, salt and mustard.

Helpful Hint: Pine nuts can be pre-roasted in a dry frying pan. Then they will acquire a more piquant taste due to the oils released during the frying process.

The original version in lavash

It is convenient to take a salad prepared in this way with you to have a snack at any time.

List of ingredients:

• 1 thin pita bread;
• 100 g feta;
• 3 small tomatoes;
• 2 cucumbers;
• 1 sweet pepper;
• 1 red onion;
• 100 g olives;
• 20 ml lemon juice;
• 50 ml of oil for dressing;
• 3 g of salt and oregano.

Cooking technology.

1. Peppers and tomatoes cut into cubes. If the cucumbers have a dense peel, they are peeled and cut into the same pieces.
2. The onion is cut into thin rings and disassembled.
3. All vegetables are carefully mixed in a salad bowl.
4. Add olives.
5. At the end put feta cubes.
6. In a separate bowl, mix oil, lemon juice, salt and seasoning.
7. Spread lettuce on a sheet of pita bread and sprinkle it with dressing.
8. Lavash is folded into an envelope or a tube. You can cut it into portions.

Greek Salad Sauce - Cooking Methods

The most common dressing for this dish is a mixture of olive oil and freshly made lemon juice. It is important to use only high-quality oil, on the label of which Extra virgin is marked.

Original sauces will help to give a new taste to the dish.

Dressing with balsamic vinegar

1. Whisk 50 ml of balsamic vinegar with 10 g of brown sugar and a minced garlic clove with a whisk.
2. Stirring constantly, add 120 ml of olive oil.
3. Season the dressing with salt and black pepper to taste.

low calorie sauce