Greek Salad
Ripe tomatoes salted until they release their juice, with cucumber, pepper, onion, stoned olives and a whole slab of feta, dressed with oil and oregano and no lettuce.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Resting
- 10 min
- Total
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Milk
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Method
Put the tomato wedges in a wide serving bowl, scatter over the salt and leave for 10 minutes. The salt draws out a pool of tomato juice, and that juice is the dressing.
Add the cucumber, pepper rings and red onion and turn them through the tomato juices.
Scatter over the olives — leave the stones in, and warn everyone they are there.
Lay the whole block of feta on top. Do not crumble it, and do not toss the salad — whoever is eating breaks the feta in.
Whisk the olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano together, rubbing the oregano between your palms as it goes in to release its aroma, and pour over.
Serve at room temperature with plenty of bread to mop up the juices at the bottom of the bowl.
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What to expect
- Taste
Salt and acid first, then sweet tomato, then the grassy bitterness of good olive oil. The feta is the strongest thing in it and it is meant to be.
- Aroma
Dried oregano and olive oil, with the tomato underneath.
- Texture
Crunch from the cucumber, pepper and onion, softness from the tomato, and the crumbly-creamy resistance of the feta.
- Sound
None.
- How the flavour moves
Salt, then acid, then sweetness, then a long peppery finish from the oil. Very direct.
- Serve it
Room temperature, deliberately.
- Goes with
Bread, and more bread. Grilled meat or fish. A cold retsina if you are committed, or any crisp white.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Beginner. The difficulty is entirely in the shopping.
- Cost
Low, and worth spending on the tomatoes and the feta.
- Equipment
A knife and a bowl.
- When to make it
Summer, when tomatoes are worth eating.
- Best season
Genuinely seasonal. Make it between July and September and not otherwise.
- You know it is done when
A pool of orange-pink liquid in the bottom of the bowl by the time it reaches the table. That pool is the point.
- And it feels like
Everything crunchy except the feta and the tomato.
- Food safety
Nothing unusual, beyond warning people about the olive stones.
- Where it goes wrong
- Adding lettuce, which is not in it and dilutes everything.
- Crumbled feta instead of a block, which is drier and often starch-dusted.
- Fridge-cold tomatoes, which taste of nothing.
- Tossing it, which breaks the feta into the dressing.
- Too much vinegar. The tomato juices are doing most of the acid.
- Making it in February with pale hard tomatoes.
- If it does go wrong
Watery and bland: the tomatoes were poor, and nothing rescues that. Too salty: less salt on the tomatoes next time — the feta and olives bring plenty. Dull: better oil, and rub the oregano between your palms rather than sprinkling it.
- Making it ahead
Chop the cucumber, pepper and onion an hour ahead. Everything else at the last minute.
- Keeping it
It does not keep. Dressed and refrigerated, it is a bowl of liquid the next day.
- Reheating
No.
- Freezing
No.
- Leftovers
The liquid in the bottom of the bowl, mopped up with bread, is the traditional end of the meal and has its own name in Greek.
- Scaling it
Linear.
- Substitutions
Green pepper is traditional and mild; red is sweeter and less authentic. Barrel-aged feta if you can find it. Do not substitute a lettuce for anything.
- Dietary swaps
Contains milk from the feta only. Vegetarian if the feta uses microbial rennet, which most does but not all. Naturally gluten free, egg free and nut free. Without the feta it is vegan and still a good salad.
- Shopping for it
Feta is a protected name and must be Greek, made from sheep's and goat's milk. 'Greek-style salad cheese' is cow's milk and a different, blander product.
- Keeping the cost down
The olive oil and the tomatoes are where the money goes and both are worth it. Feta is cheaper from a Greek or Turkish grocer.
- Sustainability
Almost entirely vegetables and olive oil, and one of the lowest-impact dishes in the collection. Sheep and goat dairy carries a higher footprint per kilogram than cow's milk, so the feta is the heaviest thing in it, and 200g across four people is a fair amount. The bigger consideration is season: this salad made with midwinter tomatoes grown under heat or flown in costs far more environmentally and tastes far worse, which is an unusually easy alignment of the two arguments.
- Nutrition
Vegetables, olive oil and cheese. The feta and olives make it saltier than it looks.
- Worth it?
Leave the lettuce out and salt the tomatoes. Everything else is shopping.
Where it comes from
- Origin
Greece.
- Also called
Horiatiki salata — village salad.
- Said out loud
hor-ee-AH-tee-kee.
- What the name means
Horiatiki means 'of the village' or rustic, and describes the origin rather than any ingredient.
- History
The dish in its present form is a twentieth-century assembly of ingredients that arrived in Greece at different times — olives, oil and sheep's cheese are ancient, while tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers came much later. Its role as the default taverna salad, and its export to every Greek restaurant abroad, both belong to the era of mass tourism from the 1960s onwards.
- Why it matters
The most recognisable Greek dish outside Greece after moussaka, and one that is very often served in a form Greeks would not recognise, with lettuce in it.
- When it is eaten
Summer, lunch, and on the table throughout a meal rather than as a course.
- The traditional way
None. It is cutting and dressing.
- How it changed
Abroad it acquired lettuce and a vinaigrette, both of which change it considerably.
- Regional variations
Some islands add capers or a local cheese; Cretan versions often include rusks — dakos — underneath to soak up the juices, which is excellent.
- How this version differs
No lettuce, olives with stones, and the tomatoes salted first so their juice becomes the dressing. All three are how it is made in Greece and all three are commonly dropped elsewhere.
- Sources and credit
None.
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Cheese
TomatoesDiets
VegetarianTechniques & equipment
No-cookTime & effort
30 minutes