Lebanese Salad with Tomatoes and Cucumbers

This Lebanese Salad with Tomatoes and Cucumbers is a simple salad that can be put together in minutes. It’s full of vegetables that can come straight from your garden too!

This month’s Recipe Redux challenge was to come up a fun way to use all those vegetables and fruits from your garden. (Update: Recipe Redux is no longer active, however, you can still click on the link to see archived recipes).

And since I’m enjoying summer to the fullest, I chose a simple, yet flavorful Lebanese Salad inspired by a recent trip to my Alma Mater.

Dan and I recently attended an out-of-town wedding for one of my good friends from high school. And on our way home we stopped by my old stomping grounds, Michigan State University, to have lunch.

Now keep in mind that I rarely ate out when I was in college mostly due to the cost factor. We decided to visit a Middle Eastern restaurant that I knew was very popular for college students.

It was hard to choose, but we both ended up ordering Shawarma sandwiches and a Lebanese Salad. We both loved the salad and even asked the owner what was in the salad so I could recreate it at home.

I’ve tried a few different combinations for this recipe and one thing is certain…you definitely need salt for it to taste authentic!

I’m not one to add salt to everything, mainly for health reasons, however, some recipes just need it.

Dietitian’s Dish

You may notice that I use extra-virgin olive oil almost exclusively when it comes to cooking. When it comes to baking, I typically use Canola oil.

Olive oil not only has a delicious flavor that pairs well with several different cuisines. It’s also high in healthy (monounsaturated) fats and low in saturated fats.

The only downside is that olive oil has a lower smoke point compared to other oils. This means it cannot be used in high-temperature cooking (e.g. not for frying or pan-searing). For cooking methods that require higher temperatures, use oils with a higher smoke point like canola oil or peanut oil.

Time Saver Tips

• Chop veggies ahead of time. You can prep the onions and cucumbers a day ahead abut wait to chop the tomatoes until you’re ready to combine all the ingredients.
• If you don’t want a full garden (which is quite time-consuming but rewarding), you can purchase small indoor herb plants to enjoy them all year round.

Other Vegetable Side Dishes That I Love

I’m on a long-term kick of eating one salad a day. I absolutely can’t eat the same salad day after day, so I’m regularly changing it up.

However, if I don’t have salad ingredients, I’ll put together non-lettuce salads like the following:

And you may notice, many of these contain beans, in addition to plenty of veggies so they can easily be enjoyed as a meal by themselves.

In regards to the Lebanese Salad, to make it a complete meal I sometimes pair it with a favorite chicken dish like this Mexican Shredded Chicken or a fish recipe like these Salmon Cakes. I often don’t worry about perfectly pairing main entrees and side dishes as you would traditionally do. I’m nowhere near that much of a perfectionist, nor do I care.

I think that as long as I’m serving a vegetable side dish alongside every dinner, it doesn’t matter what it is!

These salads can also be prepped ahead of time, excluding the dressing. Then about 30 minutes before you want to enjoy one, you can add the dressing.

This Lebanese Salad with Tomatoes and Cucumbers post first appeared on Chocolate Slopes.

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