Greek salad, classic recipe (5 step-by-step unusual recipes for Greek salad). Cooking secrets

When we asked our friends, who have been coming to Greece on holiday from different parts of the world for many years in a row, what attracts them to this country, they answered 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 exquisite dishes, Greek salad occupies not the last place.

Greek salad, in its homeland usually called “horiatiki” - rustic, 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 those simple and familiar products that which the Greek peasants ate.

It all started with tomatoes

However, tomatoes, as well as the salad itself, appeared on the Greek table relatively recently.

It is known that tomatoes were brought to Europe by 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 monastic lands - their fruits were considered poisonous. And only since 1825 they began to cultivate for food in almost all regions of the country.

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

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

The history of salad

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

In 1909, a Greek economic emigrant who had worked for many years in America in a weaving factory went to his home village for his nephew's wedding.

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

On the way home he got a toothache. At home, the damned tooth started to hurt. My sister advised me to rinse it with ouzo, aniseed vodka. The acute pain gradually subsided.

It was dinner time. The sister gathered for the table: bread, olives, cheese, some vegetables. But the tooth kept aching and did not allow me to bite vegetables, as was customary.

Then a smart man found a way out - without thinking twice, he crumbled all the food into pieces into 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 really liked it. She decided to surprise the neighbors and serve it at the wedding table. The salad was appreciated!

Since then, village 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 don't put Feta cheese in the salad, 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 and 30% goat milk. Feta goes through a very complex and long process of production and subsequent processing, developed over centuries.

Homer, in his poem “The Odyssey,” says 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 sheep and goats grazing in the meadows of Macedonia, Thrace, Epirus, Thessaly, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, and the islands of Lesbos and Crete.

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

Feta has a spicy 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 advantages, the cheese was given the brand “Feta”, and no other white cheeses made outside of Greece can be called that.

Here 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.

When asked by the famous catering company Grub Hub Seamless: “What is the favorite dish for American lunch clerks?” over twenty-five thousand restaurants and fast foods across America gave the answer: “Greek Salad.”

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

In Greece there is no tavern, restaurant, or snack bar where Khoriatiki is not served.

It goes well with any meat, fish or seafood dishes served on the table.

It can also be an excellent independent snack with any wine or other stronger drink.

The calorie content of salad in Greek and Russian sources is not the same: a serving of 200 grams is estimated by the Greeks at 415 kcal, while Russian cooks estimate only 320 kcal.

A 100-gram serving of classic Greek salad with Feta cheese contains:

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

The Guinness record was set by residents of the town of Ierapetra, in Crete, who prepared the world's largest portion 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!

Greek salad dressing: composition, recipe

The unique 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 the sauce for Greek salad is olive oil. good quality, preferably cold pressed.

In Greek cuisine, other types of base are rarely used, preferring to season all vegetable dishes with olive oil rather than mayonnaise or similar sauces.

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

Secondly, entire treatises have been written about the benefits of olive oil, from the time of Hippocrates to the last scientific research in the field of nutrition and medicine.

In the taverns of Greece, the classic village 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 infuses and acquires the taste and aroma of spices.

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

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

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

Leave the dressing to infuse and start preparing the dish.

Classic Greek salad recipe: ingredients, how to prepare

To prepare Khoriatiki, as it is prepared by housewives in Greece, we need to have the following products:

• four medium-sized tomatoes (not soft and unripe);
• one large or two medium cucumbers;
• one or two large sweet peppers;
• one head of onion, preferably sweet, pale purple in color;
• Greek Feta cheese – 100-150 grams;
• some “kalamon” olives – 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 laid in layers.

1. Wash the vegetables and dry them with a paper towel.
2. Peel the cucumbers from the outer skin and cut them into circles of medium thickness - this will be the first layer of our salad.
3. Then cut the sweet green pepper into half rings and place on top of the cucumbers.
4. First cut the tomatoes into two halves, peel the stems from the halves, then cut them in half again and lay them in an even layer.
5. Cut the onions into thin half rings, rinse them in cold water, squeeze them and place them on top of the tomatoes.
6. Capers and olives are placed on top as a decorative element of the salad.
7. We fill everything with a dressing of olive oil, oregano and lemon juice; it has already infused and acquired a specific aroma that will favorably emphasize the taste of fresh vegetables.
8. Do not stir or add salt to the salad before serving. Top the dish with a piece of Feta, pour olive oil on top and sprinkle with oregano.

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

Brilliantly simple! These are the words that can describe a Greek salad prepared according to a classic recipe.
Greek salad is incredibly quick and easy to prepare, and the ingredients for the salad are the most common and accessible to everyone.
But what is the secret of Greek salad?! And I will tell you his secret! It is contained in juicy, ripe and aromatic seasonal vegetables, which are used to prepare the salad and in perfectly selected ingredients and proportions. Vegetables for Greek salad are cut into fairly large pieces.
And you can easily prepare Greek salad at home, thanks to step by step photos, subtleties and secrets that I generously share with you on the pages of our website. And believe me, your Greek salad will turn out tastier than in a restaurant!
Let's start cooking!
And admit it, how many of you are Greek salad lovers and do you often prepare this salad at home or do you prefer to order it in a restaurant?
Also, you may like the “Shopski” salad, which is similar in composition, but slightly different in preparation technology. - this salad is not of Greek, but of Bulgarian origin, but it also turns out to be incredibly tasty and is easy to prepare. It differs from Greek in that the peppers for Shopska salad are baked, and thanks to this, the salad turns out with a very interesting taste.

Ingredients

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 in quality. The second common name is banal and obvious: vegetable salad. However, they say that over the past few decades, another name for Greek salad has come into use among Greeks - Russian salad: apparently, our compatriots order it en masse in restaurants, tightly linking the Greek dish with their own customs.

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

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 open ground, better - farm or village. 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 salad similar to Greek? This point is very important when it comes to cheese. The fact is that, according to a decision approved in 2007 in the EU, feta can only be called cheese of Greek origin, made from cow's or sheep's milk. Anything you buy in stores with that name that is not 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 analogues that are no less worthy and of high quality. Which cheese to buy to make a real Greek salad, of course, is up to you to decide.

Olives

To make a Greek salad, you will need quality pitted olives. When choosing a product, try to avoid anything canned in metal cans with attractive labels, look for small shops that specialize in selling goods from Italy or Greece - it is in these shops that you can buy pickled olives and black olives highest quality. You want juicy, firm fruits that are a beautiful chocolate color with a distinct eggplant tint. Options with filling inside are good and tasty, but are completely unsuitable for making a real Greek salad.

Olive oil

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

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

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.

Preparation

1. Wash the vegetables, cut them into large pieces. Place in a salad bowl.
2. Peel the onion, cut into half rings, and marinate a little if desired. Place in a salad bowl.
3. Add olives without brine.
4. Salt. Mix carefully.
5. 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.
6. Sprinkle with oregano.
7. 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 can be served in “boats” of 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 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 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

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, did one of the Greeks come to the United States and guessed to cook 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!

The wide variety of Greek salads, whose homeland is Greece, is explained by its wide popularity outside this country. In Russia, the salad became public knowledge closer to the new century, only in a slightly modified form. Feta cheese, which is made from goat or sheep milk, is added to traditional Greek cheese. A more budget-friendly version of the salad included feta cheese. Vegan lovers prefer to replace feta with soybean tofu.

The five most commonly used ingredients in Greek salad recipes are:

The classic composition of a Greek salad basket is as follows:

• Chees Feta
• tomatoes
• cucumbers
• olives
• shallot
• olive oil
  The only spices are salt, oregano and ground black pepper.

In different variations of Greek, they add to it: capers, anchovies, sun-dried tomatoes, bell pepper, onions, lettuce, assorted greens, garlic, the mentioned cheese, croutons, chicken fillet and much more.

Five of the fastest Greek salad recipes:

The main difference between Greek and any other salads is the brightness and larger cutting of vegetables. At home, the salad is not mixed before serving - this is done directly in the plate. It doesn’t affect the taste in any way, rather it’s a matter of habit. Brightness is achieved with green cucumbers, red tomatoes, black olives, white cheese and yellow olive oil. Although the Greeks themselves prefer to peel cucumbers.

• a little lemon juice in olive oil adds a subtle flavor to the salad
• the dish will be tastier if salt and spices are mixed in vegetable oil, then water the vegetables
• you need to be careful with salt: there is quite enough of it in cheese and olives

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