Fattoush Salad a Fantastic Meal on its Own

Fattoush Salad سلطة فتوش is simply a large bowl of salad that contains a variety of different fresh vegetables.

The unique thing about this salad is that it includes pieces of toasted khubez (Arabic flatbread) which in return can make this salad a meal on its own.

It’s known that this salad was originated in Northern Lebanon. And, now it’s very popular in Palestine as well.

It’s believed that the idea behind this salad is that farmers came up with this dish to use old bread and leftover vegetables available in their household.

There are perhaps different variations for this dish, some use different kinds of vegetables, and some fry the bread -perhaps my least favorite option. Some use pomegranate molasses as a dressing.

So many slightly different variations, but yet a bowl of salad that is full of healthy fresh vegetables and tastes so good.

Unlike tabbouleh which requires ingredients to be finely chopped, with fattoush the vegetables are cut into relatively large pieces. Which in return takes less time in preparing.

And since I’m a big fan of salad, and I love this dish, I made my twist. So here is my variation for this dish, which makes it healthy, fresh and so good.

So here is how to make fattoush salad:

I love this particular combination of fattoush, which is more of the common ingredients that have been used:

Roman lettuce, cucumbers (I use Persian cucumbers) tomatoes (I like to use cherry tomatoes, but any other type certainly can work) radishes.

Purslane (or baqleh in Arabic) apart from being popular in Palestine it is apparently also popular in Mexico and has great health benefits similar to the health benefits to lemongrass in fighting cancer. Then green onions, fresh mint, and parsley, I also like to use some jalapeno peppers.

There is no rule of thumb when it comes to which vegetables to use when making fattoush, any kind of vegetables available in your fridge can work.

As for the bread, I can certainly toast khubez and chop it into smaller pieces to add to the salad. However, I found these multigrain pita chips from Trader Joe’s that taste really good and are ready to go, I just cut each piece in half.

I like to add the bread towards the end because if it’s added early on the bread will get soft from the dressing juice, I love the crunchy taste of the bread when I eat fattoush.

As for the dressing, I love to use the traditional Palestinian dressing, olive oil, lemon, and salt, lots of it makes this salad full of flavor. And on to add a sprinkle of sumac or mix it with the dressing.

I like to add some fetta cheese or Arabic white cheese crumbled, I do love the combination of the veggies, with multigrain pita chips and the cheese, so this makes this salad a full meal.

So here is how to make fattoush salad

This recipe is enough for 2-3 people

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