Tabouli Recipe
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Tabouli is a type of Middle Eastern / Mediterranean salad that is served alongside any Middle Eastern menu you may be planning. It is heavy on the parsley and lemon juice and is a great, light, dish to serve with hummus, grape leaves, or any other Mideast dish. It is a great food for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike and is very healthy as well. It will also leave your breath parsley-clean!
It is especially popular in Lebanon, where it is considered a national dish, but is also common throughout the entire Middle East and even the world at this point.
Here is a recipe. It's a pretty good mix of ingredients but people have told me to not put garlic into Tabouli, but I think it adds a nice, slight tang that cements the deal for me.
Be sure and keep some of the lemon juice to add to it later.
Its main ingredient is bulgur wheat, best bought from a health food store or Arabic/Mediterranean shop in one of those bulk containers. You can usually buy a ton of it for very very little. There are sometimes different grades of bulgur, and typically the finer the grade it is, the best your tabouli will be.
Bulgur Wheat (finely chopped) - Use about 1 cup
Lemon Juice - 1/3 cup, or about two lemons
Extra Virgin Olive Oil - 1/3 cup
Garlic - 1 or 2 cloves, minced
Scallions or Green Onions - about 4, in their entirety, sliced very thinly or minced
Parsley - about 2 bunches, either chopped very finely or thrown into a food processor with the scallions
Mint Leaves or Dried Mint - say about 5 mint leaves or a teaspoon of dried mint flakes (depending on how minty you like it, this recipe is fairly non-minty)
Tomatoes - 2 of them about medium size, dice them very finely by hand
Salt, Pepper (2 teaspoons each or more if you like it, heavy on the pepper is good)
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Cooking Instructions:
Place the bulgur wheat into a heavy glass bowl (this can be your serving bowl if it can take boiling water and chilled temperatures)
Pour about 1.5 cups of boiling water on to the bulgur wheat and let it sit there for about half an hour on its own
After sitting, mix, using a spoon, and stir in the lemon juice, salt, pepper, minced garlic.
Cover with plastic or a lid and place in your refrigerator for an hour, or more if you like.
Then mix in the parsley, scallions, tomatoes and put back in the refrigerator for another hour, but not much longer than that.
Serve chilled. You can add extra lemon juice and olive oil afterwards to taste. If it's too wheaty, add more chopped parsley.
This recipe makes about 4-6 servings.
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