Israeli Salad with Goat Cheese – a delicious finely chopped veggie salad topped with goat cheese and herbs, making for a perfect light and healthy lunch.
Oh my! I have 5 words for you, my webbie friends.
This salad is a must!
This salad was gone just about as soon as I put it on the table. I could just cry, it’s so good. I probably mentioned this before but hubs is a salad connoisseur, a salad aficionado. I know, strange for a man, but my man is no ordinary man. Remember my man mostly loves sandwiches and hates pasta. But he does know a good salad when he sees one. Not only that but he can make a mean salad.
But I made this salad. He just ate most of it, although I did enjoy a couple bites.
If you’ve never heard of an Israeli salad, don’t get frightened by the name. It’s mostly a vegetable salad, a chopped salad of finely diced tomatoes and cucumbers. But that’s what distinguishes this Israeli salad, is the tiny diced tomatoes and cucumbers. And this is what really delighted my husband. The tiny tiny veggies. He loves his salad finely chopped, so this was the perfect salad for him.
Of course the main ingredients of this salad are the cucumbers and tomatoes. So please take the time to finely chop them as small as you can. You’ll appreciate it. Trust me. You will need a very sharp knife for this, but please be careful and do not chop your fingers in the process, very easy to do. I used cocktail tomatoes because those are pretty much the only tomatoes we love, or cherry tomatoes, but it’s easier here if you use larger tomatoes, easier for chopping.
You’ll also need a couple bell peppers, I chose to go with an orange one and a red one, but please use whatever you have on hand. Also what makes this salad great is the herbs, I went with mint and parsley.
I have a sort of funny story about using mint in food. One time when my mom was over, I made these Turkish meat pies for her and at first she was very excited to try them. But then she asked me what was in them, and as soon as I mentioned mint, she put the pie down and did not want to take another bite. You see my mom is not very adventurous when it comes to food, she’ll stick to foods she knows and to her mint is for tea and nothing else. I tried to get her to eat the pies, because they are so good, but no luck. My mom was in China once for a whole month with my dad, and she was so scared to eat anything there, she pretty much survived on cheese and crackers for the entire month.
So if you are like my mother, please skip the mint, just add the parsley. But if you dare to try things that are out of your comfort zone, the mint will add a nice flavor to the salad, totally worth it.
Being Christmas season and all I had to add some pomegranate seeds to the salad, it gave it a real nice sweetness. But my trick was instead of buying the pomegranate fruit and spending minutes if not hours cleaning it, and making a mess of myself in the process, I bought pomegranate seeds at Costco. So easy and what a great idea!
Since I had lots of goat cheese left over after the artichoke pizza I made, well it was a no brainer and added some to this salad. Needless to say, as you toss this salad the goat cheese melts a bit and blends in with the lemon juice and olive oil and create this nice creamy dressing. I really hope you give this salad a try, it’s one of my favorites. Serve it with some chicken or simply just on its own. It makes for a perfect light and healthy lunch.
If you guys love this recipe, and most importantly make it yourselves, please let us know. Take a picture and tag it #jocooks on Instagram so we can see it. I always love to see what you guys come up with!
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Israeli Salad with Goat Cheese
Ingredients
- 5 cocktail tomatoes or 2 large tomatoes
- 1 English cucumber
- 1 yellow bell pepper I used orange
- 1 red bell pepper
- 1/2 cup parsley chopped
- 1/4 cup mint chopped
- 1 cup goat cheese crumbled
- 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
- 1 tbsp lemon zest
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Chop all the ingredients into very small pieces. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl together with the olive oil, zest and lemon juice and toss. Season with salt and pepper.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition Information:
More delicious recipes from my kitchen
Chicken Shawarma Tabbouleh Salad
Mediterranean Grilled Chicken Salad
This is tangy and bright, and we really enjoyed it. To make this a main dish, you might add beans (kidney, black or garbanzo) for some protein. Sunflower seeds would add some nice crunch.
If only I could eat those photos! I am so making this! THANK YOU!! I’m going to pre-rate this because I have no doubts at all that I won’t LOVE it!
I am really excited to make this tomorrow, but I couldn’t find any pomegranates at the store. What would be a good substitution?
Blueberries would be great, or even a few strawberries. 🙂
Tried it with the blueberries. It was absolutely amazing! This salad is a real winner!
Nice!
This says 4 servings. How big are the servings? I am wanting to use this for the salad portion of a 5 course meal. Curious if I really need to double.
Each serving is about 1 1/4 cups.
I wanted to make this but I really don’t like goat cheese…or any types of blue cheese. In your yummy experience what would be a good alternate for me to use?
How about just regular feta cheese or some qeuso fresco, it’s a bit milder and tangy.
Jo – can I make the Israeli salad ahead of time? Or what parts? I’m having a dinner party and am not a great cook. I need all the prep aheads I can find.
Absolutely, I just wouldn’t add the lemon juice and olive oil until ready to serve. Good luck. 🙂
Good, I am glad to see a delicious salad recipe that is light. Soooo many goodies
and heavy meals on one’s path this time of year. I can’t do it all, but I still like to
eat. So it feels good to feel enthusiasm for something I can actually seriously consider.
Exactly, we all love those heavy meals but every once in a while you need something healthy but still delicious. 🙂