Shirazi Salad

Tiny diced Shirazi salad with tons of fantastic summer flavors is one of the best simple salads. The flavors do all the work, but the heavy lifting in the recipe is all in the dicing. Careful small cuts help make a chopped salad a star of the table in no time. 

Want more of a main dish over side dish? Serve all these vegetable goodies on leafy greens or with your choice of protein for a guilt-free delicious meal idea. Let’s get started!

Why you will love making Shirazi Cucumber Tomato Salad

Easy to Alter – The key to tiny chopped salad is all in the ingredients. While English cucumber, tomatoes, and red onions have always been a fantastic grouping, there are many ways to switch it up.

Make this one Greek, Asian flare, or good old-fashioned southern food; use any fresh ingredients to make this recipe your own. 

Salad and Salsa – While this dish is meant to be a salad you can eat with a spoon, it also layers quite nicely as a fresca salsa on tortilla chips, corn chips, or pita bread. 

Where did this salad come from? The origins of the salad are rooted in Israeli, Iranian salad Shirazi and Persian cultures.

Salad Ingredients: 

• Cucumbers –  cut into tiny pieces/diced
• Roma tomatoes – Seeds removed and cut into tiny pieces/diced.
• diced red onion
• lemons
• extra virgin olive oil
• kosher salt and black pepper
• optional salad flavors: diced black olives, garbanzo beans, rinsed black beans, or chickpeas

How to make Tiny Chopped Salad

1. The key to this entire tiny chopped salad recipe is in the chopping. The cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions must be carefully diced down to small pieces before moving on to the rest of the recipe.
2. Once chopped, add cucumbers, ripe tomatoes, and onions to a medium bowl and mix well.
3. Add the fresh lemon juice of 2 lemons (or lemon juice if that is all you have) and olive oil to the mixing bowl.
4. Season generously with salt and pepper and mix well. 
5. Let diced salad stand for flavors to mingle or cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. 
6. Makes 6 cups of salad. 

Chopped Recipe Variations

Get caught up on those dicing skills because this tiny chopped salad can easily add many different ingredients. 

• Fresh Vegetables – Bell pepper, kalamata olives, green olives, or Chopped purple or green cabbage.
• Cheese – If wanting to add more Mediterranean flavors to this delicious salad, add feta cheese or goat cheese. 

• Protein – Turn Israeli salad into a main dish by adding chicken (our favorite is this chicken 101 recipe) to it.
• Day of ingredients – I love diced avocado in salads, but it goes brown quickly, so add all diced avocado day of serving.
• Spices – Another change in healthy salads is just switching up the spices. Try cloves garlic, pepper flakes for some heat, or a little sprinkle of balsamic vinegar.

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