There are many examples in life that everything ingenious is simple. And sometimes life says the opposite, we find things and deeds, the implementation of which will not be difficult, and the result will bring the most desired result. If everything was "according to the pike commandment, according to my desire ..."
Ah, fairy tales are wonderful, but even more wonderful is world culinary. It is thanks to the traditional classic recipes that we now own a whole encyclopedia of ways to prepare this or that dish. One of the simplest and most beloved dishes around the world is Greek salad. How to cook this dish? This is what will be discussed in the article.
How to cook a classic Greek salad? Recipes for its preparation can be found in this article.
As a bonus, you will receive three recipes for sauces to serve with this dish. You will also learn how to serve salad and discover the boundaries of your culinary imagination, because there are a lot of experiments here.
How to cook Greek salad at home?
Yes, very simple. Moreover, this is exactly how he appeared - not in a restaurant, not in an eatery, but in the warm atmosphere of home comfort.
Greece is a country of picturesque landscapes, filled with intriguing antiquities and the desire of people to create large and strong families. And what is a big and strong family? This is a constant standing at the stove. Moreover, home-made dishes, although simple, are in no way inferior to the eminent delicacies of the royal courts. Food prepared with a twinkle and without any frills becomes a unifying factor in the family. As you know, it is the ritual of food intake that brings people together and makes bonds stronger.
If you do not know how to cook a Greek salad, then from our review you will learn the secrets of preparing a delicious and at the same time simple dish, which has become a brand of a loving country.
The special charm of the salad is its low calorie content.
As calculated data indicate, about 130 kilocalories per 100 grams of ready-made salad, depending on the components and dressing. You can reduce the fat content of the dish by cutting fatty dressing and cheese.
Classics of the genre
The classic recipe for Greek salad (making this dish is not so difficult) will be presented step by step further. But before that, I would like to warn the hostesses that this option is far from the only one. Because there is an opportunity to change the salad recipe at any stage - from this it will not lose its taste at all, but, on the contrary, it will acquire new mouth-watering qualities.
So, to prepare a Greek salad, first you need to stock up on the necessary ingredients:
- 2 medium cucumbers;
- 2 medium tomatoes with dense pulp;
- 1 bell pepper;
- 1 blue Crimean bulb of medium size;
- 20 pieces of large pitted olives;
- 100 g of feta cheese;
- half a teaspoon of oregano or oregano;
- two to three tablespoons of olive oil;
- one and a half tablespoons of lemon juice;
- pepper, salt - optional.
How to make Greek salad: a step by step recipe
Next, we dwell on the technology of cooking a popular Greek dish. So, how to cook Greek salad step by step?
1. We take tomatoes and cucumbers. Wash and chop them on the board in large pieces (approximately 2.5 centimeters). If the skin of the cucumbers is too dense and hard, you can pre-clean them.
2. Next, you need to chop the blue onion at your own discretion: someone likes big rings, someone prefers modest half rings. If your family is not happy with onion dishes, try chopping it as thin as possible.
3. Next, we begin to clean the pepper from seeds and white membranes and cut it into large squares (value - 2.5 centimeters).
4. To prepare a Greek salad (the recipe in this case is classical), then you need to take whole olives (if large, it is better to cut in half).
5. Then pour the vegetables into a larger bowl and mix everything carefully. Two large shoulder blades will help you with this.
6. Salt and pepper the salad to taste. It is worth considering the fact that feta cheese can be quite salty on its own, which already suggests that jokes with salt here can lead to unpleasant results.
7. Next, beat the olive oil with lemon juice. This will be the salad dressing.
8. Cut feta cheese into large pieces (along with cucumbers) and lay them in the style of a creative mess right on top of the salad.
9. It remains to add a little oregano, and the dish is ready.
Now you know how to cook a Greek salad according to the recipe (see the photo of the dish above).
Vary the ingredients
If you want to know how to cook Greek salad in another way, then the following recommendations are for you. There are many options here, and we will consider each in particular.
First onion
It can be pre-marinated. The simplest way is to chop onion marinade and a mixture of vinegar (3 parts) and granulated sugar (2 parts). It is also important to slightly salt and insist the resulting composition for half an hour. Then we drain the juice and add sliced to other vegetables.
Onions can be cut finely - with quarters of rings, for example. So its taste in the salad will be barely noticeable. For the preparation of Greek salad, you can take several varieties of onions. For example, white and blue in a proportion of one to two or equally. Experienced cooks also advise pickled white onion varieties to soften the taste.
The components can be varied here endlessly. Even replace a quarter of the onions with garlic cloves. One important nuance: it is better to chop the garlic with a knife (into a small cube).
Secondly, olives and cucumbers
They can be cut larger or smaller, you can even leave them whole, or even replace them with olives and capers (yes, the very moment when the usual ingredient for the Greeks is something exotic in our country).
As for cucumbers, here you can safely play with slices. And you can clean it differently for larger pieces: for example, alternate skinning strips. A manual peeler-peeler can handle this very quickly : you can remove one strip from it and leave the other. And so on, you can alternate throughout the skin. As a result, we get a kind of cucumber-zebra, the “back” of which in the salad will stand out in white-green.
Third, tomatoes
There are many options for the sea: you can use other varieties, you can create combinations of several varieties, or you can completely concentrate on the cherry, cut in half.
Do not forget about the color balance: you can create a really “tasty” picture if you vary the tomatoes of different colors, for example, orange (yellow) and red. So the dish will not only acquire a more spectacular appearance, but also the corresponding meatiness. Also, due to the inclusion of low-acid and saturated orange tomatoes, the acidity in the dish can be significantly reduced.
Tomatoes can also be cleaned, strangely enough it will sound for our population. It turns out it's incredibly delicious. Juicy, large, impeccably soft slices of tomatoes - an option that hardly anyone will refuse.
Fourth, pepper
This is a real ode to multicolor. Particularly interesting option: thin stripe cutting. Another unusual idea has been prepared for readers of this article. And although it increases the labor intensity of the process a little, really enthusiastic reviews of those who at least once tried the dish in this design are dedicated to it. To do this, look at the thick-walled pepper hiding the fleshy flesh and understand one fact - it can also be cleaned! It turns out that due to cleaning you can get a really refined taste.
So, you will need a sharp knife or a purifier cleaner. Very popular is the cooking technology in southern cuisine, which adopted this Greek idea with a bang. Italy, Bulgaria, France, Kherson, Odessa, Crimea - in any of these places you can be served the classic "Greek salad" with peeled peppers and tomatoes. This technique allows you to achieve special tenderness and exaltation of the dish.
How to replace feta?
A very popular substitute is a simple salty cheese, which can be found in the vastness of any local market. Large pieces of cream cheese with a strong fragrance (smoked meats, greens, but not tomatoes!) Are also great for a salad. By the way, cream cheese will have to be salted, because, unlike home-made feta cheese, it is prepared with less salt.
A great substitute: Dutch cheese to be cut into small pieces. Of course, there is already a discrepancy with pure classics, but who said that it will taste bad? Perhaps personal inclusion in the recipe will create a new unique dish that will turn into a family recipe transmitted from grandmother to mother, from mother to daughter and so on. And conservative husbands will be even happier, knowing that in their salad there is no "overseas rubbish", but only natural and understandable ingredients.
Is it possible to add meat?
Of course you can! After all, this is your kitchen and your taste preferences. The recommendations of cooks here are limited only by orientation on cheese. If you, for example, bought more salty cheese, it is better to use fresh boiled chicken. Take the risk and make a salad with regular cheese? Better add smoked, well-salted meat. However, you can make any meat component at your own discretion.
It is worth mentioning that such a salad will not be stored for long: the dissonance of fresh seasonal vegetables and smoked meats will not last long. In addition to meat, the salad can be supplied with another protein ingredient, which can often be seen in salads of various kinds: mushrooms. Both raw white, champignons, pickled mushrooms, and fervent chanterelles will go up to the Greek salad. You just need to rinse the fungi from the mucus and dry it. The ideal dish in the hot season will save you from the great torment of standing at the hot stove. Simplicity and your imagination - this is the key to the perfect dish!
Dressing with sauce
Now you have exactly figured out how to cook a Greek salad (see photo of examples in the article). It remains only to choose a gas station.
In addition to the variations with the classic sauce, you can flavor the salad with honey mustard sauce. Preparing the sauce: take mustard of weak vigor, olive oil and honey in equal proportions, whisk everything with a whisk. If your composition is too thick, you can add more oil.
If you opted for low-salted cheese, soy sauce for dressing is useful to you. We prepare salty and saturated soy sauce: beat 2 tablespoons of olive oil with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon of medium or weak mustard.
As an option, dressing may be garlic, squeezed through a garlic crush with the addition of bread crumbs and olive oil.
In addition to all of the above, Greek salad perfectly "gets along" with scrambled eggs, shrimp, granular cottage cheese, Chinese cabbage and so on.