A vegetarian salad that exudes colours and flavours, Tabbouleh is a great way to shake up your salad menu options in an instant.

Tabbouleh in the less-traditional sense, can be made in any number of ways to suit your menu or accompany another portion of your dishes.

Usually served as part of a mezze in the Arab world, we think that the rest of world really took notice of this amazing vegetarian option.

The word tabbouleh is actually derived from the Arabic word for ‘seasoning’, which is the most apt way of describing what tabbouleh actually is.

Herbs form a major part of the dish, with the main ingredients consisting of parsley, tomato and bulghar wheat. In some parts of the Arab world, pomegranate seeds replace tomato as a key ingredient.

One of the most popular salads in the Middle East, every region has their own slight variation on the dish, with amounts of each ingredient varying from nation to nation.

A photo posted by Nasza Kasza (@naszakasza) on Sep 16, 2016 at 3:10am PDT

Most Middle Eastern chefs, cooks (and eaters for that matter!) can be very defensive over their method of making tabbouleh. But we are going to go with a simple recipe that we enjoy.

Ingredients

• 50g bulghar wheat
• 50g flat-leaf parsley
• 50g mint
• 200g ripe tomatoes
• 3 spring onions
• juice of 1 lemon
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil

Method

1. Rinse the bulghar wheat in a sieve until the what runs clear, therefore removing the starch. Drain well and transfer to a bowl.
2. Pour over 200ml boiling water, and then cover with cling film and leave to soak for 30 minutes whilst preparing the other ingredients.
3. Chop your parsley leaves roughly, it’s easier to do this with the parsley in a bunch.
4. Chop the mint in the same manner as the parsley, and add both the chopped parsley and mint to a large bowl.
5. De-seed the tomato and chop into halves, add to the bowl.
6. Finely dice the spring onion and add to the bowl.
7. Thoroughly drain the bulghar once more after leaving to soak, then add to the herb mixture.
8. Add the olive oil and lemon juice and mix thoroughly.
9. Season and serve!

Remember to treat your parsley with care, this is essentially a parsley salad, not a bulghar salad like many will have you believe.

An amazing addition to a meal that includes meat, or even as a standalone main meal, your guests will be stunned by the refreshing taste of tabbouleh.

Create tabbouleh in advance, and season just before serving for an incredibly easy menu option with our range of superb salad containers, salad spinners and salt & pepper mills for perfect parsley salads in an instant.