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Chopped Salad · Turkish-style

Turkish Shepherd's Salad

A chopped Turkish-style salad of tomato, cucumber, green pepper, onion, and parsley, dressed with just olive oil and lemon and served fresh.

Prep
25 min
Total
25 min
Servings
4 (about 5 cups, four generous sides or six smaller ones)

For the salad

  • 1 lb / 450g ripe tomatoes, cut into 1 cm (½ in) dice; peeled first if you like
  • 10 oz / 300g small cucumbers, cut into 1 cm (½ in) dice
  • 5 oz / 150g long, mild green peppers, seeded and diced into 5 mm (¼ in) pieces
  • 3 oz / 80g onion, finely diced
  • 0.5 cup / 30g fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

For the dressing and finish

  • 3 tbsp / 45ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 tbsp / 30ml fresh lemon juice
  • ¾ tsp, plus more to taste fine sea salt
  • to taste black pepper
  • 1 tsp, for serving sumac (optional)
  • ¼ tsp, for serving chili flakes (optional)

Cut the vegetables

  1. If the tomatoes are very juicy, quarter them and trim out the wet seed pockets first. Dice them into 1 cm (½ in) pieces and tip them into a sieve set over a bowl to drain while you cut everything else.
  2. Dice the cucumbers into 1 cm (½ in) pieces and the peppers into 5 mm (¼ in) pieces. Finely dice the onion, rinse it in a sieve under cold running water, and drain it well. Finely chop the parsley.
  3. Put the cucumbers, peppers, onion, and parsley in a large bowl. Shake the tomatoes dry and add them.

Dress and serve

  1. In a small bowl, whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and a few grinds of pepper.
  2. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss gently. Taste, and add more salt or lemon if it needs it.
  3. Serve right away. Put the sumac and chili flakes, if using, in small dishes so people can add their own.

This is a salad with no cooking and nothing to hide behind, so the knife does the work. Everything is cut small and close in size, which means each forkful has a bit of tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion, and parsley in it instead of one big piece of something. The same small, even cuts are what make the meat-and-cheese Grinder Salad easy to eat with a fork.

Cut it small, and cut it even

Dice the tomatoes and cucumbers at about 1 cm (½ in), the peppers a little finer, and the onion and parsley finest of all. The onion and pepper are strong and are there to season the bowl, not to lead it. Many recipes call for peeled tomatoes. It's optional here: peeling gives a softer bite, but ripe tomatoes are fine with their skins on.

The peppers should be the long, mild kind. Hot or very thick-walled peppers change the salad, so see the swaps below if you can't find them.

Keep the water in check

Juicy tomatoes are the main problem. Trim the seed pockets out of very wet ones and let the diced tomatoes drain in a sieve while you cut the rest. Then dress the salad at the last moment. Once the vegetables are salted and dressed they start to give up liquid, and a bowl left to sit ends up watery.

That makes this the opposite of the Mediterranean Dense Bean Salad, which is built to improve in the refrigerator. This one is a serve-fresh salad.

The dressing

Olive oil, lemon juice, and salt are all the dressing it needs. Use an olive oil you like the taste of, because there is nothing else to cover for it. Start with the amounts given, and add lemon a teaspoon at a time if your tomatoes are on the sweet side and the bowl tastes flat.

Sumac and chili flakes are optional finishing seasonings. Sumac adds tartness, and the chili flakes add warmth. Putting them in small dishes at the table lets everyone choose. Some versions of the salad also use fresh mint or a splash of vinegar, which is the variation below.

Keeping it

If you want to get ahead, prepare the firmer vegetables and the parsley in advance and leave the tomatoes and dressing until just before serving. Leftovers are fine in the refrigerator, but they will be wetter than the fresh salad. Drain them first.