Easy Mediterranean Chopped Salad
Enjoy this Easy Mediterranean Chopped Salad made with cucumbers, tomatoes red onions, Kalamata olives, and a light lemon-olive oil dressing! It is ready in just 15 minutes. Delicious on its own or paired with your favorite protein.
Course: Dinner, Lunch
Cuisine: American
Keyword: detox, healthy recipe, paleo, Salad, Whole30
Servings: 2
- For the Dressing:
- juice and zest of 2 large lemons use organic if you’re using the zest
- ½ cup olive oil
- ½-1 teaspoon salt
- For the Salad:
- 1 large English cucumber finely diced
- ½ cup to 1 cup red onion finely diced
- 4 Roma or Plum tomatoes finely diced
- ¼-½ cup Kalamata olives finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon salt (I used sea salt) or more, to taste
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper or more, to taste
Make the easy dressing: In a large bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients. Or, add all the dressing ingredients in a glass jar. Close the lid tightly and shake vigorously.
Prep the salad: Rinse the cucumber and tomatoes well. Finely dice all the vegetables. Chop up the olives.
Add all the ingredients to a large bowl.
Mix the salad: Add on the dressing to the salad, and stir to combine. Check the flavoring, and add more salt and freshly ground pepper to your taste. Add a little hot pepper, if you enjoy a little spicy kick! You could let it marinate before enjoying( even 5-15 minutes will give the flavors time to nicely combine together).
Yields: you’ll get about 4 generous portions with this amount of veggies.
Dressing: Double the recipe and use the rest for other salad recipes (will keep fresh for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator).
Cucumbers: Use 1 large or 2 smaller English cucumbers. If you use a regular cucumber, it should be peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and diced (no need to peel and seed an English cucumber).
Red onions: If using 1 large red onion, 1/2 onion should yield approximately 1 cup finely diced. You could sub a sweet onion. Use 1/2 - 1 cup finely diced onion, Use less, if you prefer.
Tomatoes: Use two large Roma or Plum tomatoes. Or if you have cherry or grape tomatoes on hand, use 1 ½ -2 cups cut in half. If using Roma or Plum, seed if you prefer.
Kalamata olives: If you don’t have kalamata on hand, you could use black olives.
To Store: If you’re planning to just have 1 portion, do not add the dressing. Dressing will stay fresh for up to 2 weeks in a tightly sealed jar in the refrigerator. If you’ve combined the salad and dressing, the dressed salad will keep in the refrigerator in an airtight container for a few days.