Fattoush
Tips
The best fattoush salad needs perfectly toasted bread. If you prefer to fry your bread of choice rather than baking it, you can pan-fry it to make deliciously crispy fattoush chips.
Tips
The best way to fry pita bread for fattoush is to toss the pieces with a bit of olive oil before transferring them to a warm pan. The exact cooking time depends on the thickness of the bread you use but the bread pieces should be crispy and golden in colour, 5-6 minutes at medium heat should do it.
Questions about fattoush
With the perfect fattoush recipe in your repertoire, making this colourful and flavour-packed bread salad is quick and easy. To learn more about it, read our answers to the most frequently asked questions below.
Fattoush salad belongs to the fatteh family which is made up of different dishes that feature bread. Popular across the Mediterranean, Levant, Middle East, and North Africa, these dishes have deliciously crunchy vegetables, crispy bread, and delicious dressings. This perhaps most well-known fatteh dish is no different. The colourful salad contains a selection of crunchy vegetables, fresh parsley and mint, crispy, baked bread, and a homemade dressing with olive oil, garlic, mint, and lemon juice.
A classic fattoush dressing is a rich olive oil-based dressing with mint, lemon juice, and garlic. It is as such aromatic and fresh with a bit of sharpness to it from the fresh, pungent garlic. Some recipes call for the use of pomegranate molasses, too. This thick, rich molasses made from reduced pomegranate juice adds a syrupy sweetness and creaminess that gives the dressing a distinctly Middle Eastern twist.
First, prepare the aromatic dressing with olive oil, fresh garlic, dried mint, and lemon juice to allow time for the flavours to marry and deepen. Once you have the dressing in the fridge, prepare the crispy, oven-baked bread. Mix the chopped vegetables and herbs with the dressing and sprinkle with half of the bread. Serve with the remaining bread on the side.
Even though some restaurants serve Mediterranean fattoush salad with deep-fried, golden-brown bread, there is no need to deep-fry it at home. Baked in the oven, pita bread, flatbread, or naan also becomes wonderfully crispy. To prepare this signature part of the dish, simply tear your bread of choice into bite-sized pieces and place them in an even layer on a lined baking tray. Bake them in the oven for a few minutes until they are crispy and golden. You can also choose to pan-fry your bread to make the pieces more chips-like.
You can serve fattoush salad with chicken, steak, lamb, or shawarma either in it or on the side. It tastes great with all types of meat whether they are mild and tender, juicy, rich, and umami-packed, or earthy and gamey. You can also serve bulgur tabbouleh and fattoush as part of a delightful meze spread with different salads, meat skewers, and tasty dips like labneh, tzatziki, hummus, and haydari.
When tossed, it is best to enjoy the salad within 24 hours as the fresh vegetables and tasty dressing will lead the crispy bread to become soggy. Without dressing, it may be stored in the fridge for up to 4 days. Simply store the salad, bread, and dressing in separate airtight containers. We do not recommend freezing as it will ruin the texture and flavours.
Ingredients
Dressing:
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Big garlic cloves, crushed
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2 |
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Olive oil
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50 ml |
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Freshly squeezed lemon juice
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2 tbsp |
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Dried mint
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½ tsp |
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Coarse salt
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1 tsp |
Bread salad:
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Flatbread or naan
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½ |
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Tomatoes, diced
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3 |
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Cucumbers, cut into cubes
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2 |
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Green pepper, cut into cubes
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1 |
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Regular radishes or black radishes, finely chopped
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10 |
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Red onion, cut into very thin half-slices
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1 |
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Spring onions (approx. 100 g), sliced into thin rings
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1 bundle |
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Romaine lettuce, finely shredded
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1 l |
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Fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
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20 g |
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Fresh mint leaves, chopped
|
50 ml |
Other recipes
Lebanese fattoush salad with classic ingredients
This authentic Levantine bread salad is a flavourful, elevated garden salad with crispy baked bread and an aromatic dressing. The colourful salad contains classic salad vegetables like crispy romaine lettuce, sweet-tangy tomatoes, mellow cucumber, and sharp red onion. In addition, though, it also has peppery radishes and slightly bitter green peppers in it to create a more complex flavour profile.
The crunchy vegetables are brightened by the addition of fresh mint and parsley. Mint has a sweet taste as well as a lingering cool effect. Parsley, on the other hand, is a little bit bitter, somewhat peppery, and has earthy undertones. Together the two aromatic herbs help create the distinctively Levantine and Middle Eastern flavour profile for which this delicious dish is known.
Crispy fried pita bread, flatbread, or naan
No fattoush salad is complete without pieces of crispy bread. Whether you use fluffy pita bread, thin flatbread, soft Turkish bread, or tender Indian naan, your Lebanese bread salad will taste wonderful. When fried in the oven, the torn bread becomes beautifully golden and crispy. The crunchy exterior makes it wonderfully snack-like to bite into and also protects it from softening immediately when it is tossed with traditional mint dressing.
Since the bread is given new life by being toasted in the oven, you do not even have to use fresh bread to achieve a deliciously crispy result. So if you have some stale bread lying around, give it new life by toasting it to this delicious salad.
Garlic and mint fattoush dressing
Though it does not contain vinegar, the olive oil-based dressing for fattoush salad is vinaigrette-like in consistency. This means it is rich without being heavy. In large part, this is owing to the sharpness of the raw garlic, the cooling effect of the mint, and, of course, the zesty lemon juice that introduces a brightening acidity. When combined, you get an incredibly aromatic and flavourful dressing perfect for marinating vegetables, bread, and fresh herbs.
Different ways to serve fattoush
Fattoush salad may be enjoyed just as it is. It is perfect as a starter or main course for lunch or dinner. If you want to, you can serve it with falafels, chicken, beef, or lamb chops. The flavourful, colourful combination of vegetables lends itself well to any type of meat, meaning you can mix it up each time you serve it.
The Levantine dish also lends itself well to being part of a meze spread with an assortment of different salads, meats, and dips like hummus, labneh, haydari, and so on. Similar to Italian antipasti and Spanish tapas, meze consists of small dishes served as appetizers in the Balkans, Levant, and Caucasus as well as in Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Served as a meze dish, it may be enjoyed by more people.
Experiment with the recipe
A tasty way to make your homemade fattoush salad more substantial is to add meat. Shawarma fattoush salad is, for instance, incredibly tasty. Whether it is made with umami-packed beef shawarma or flavourful lamb shawarma, it is sure to be a scrumptious addition to your salad.
You can also use pieces of oven-fried chicken. Toss it with the vegetables, herbs, and dressing to make a grilled chicken fattoush salad. Baking or grilling a whole chicken allows you to flavour it any way you like. For this salad, we recommend citrussy sumac or a nutty, earthy dukkah spice blend.
Another exciting way to play around with our recipe is to make a traditional fattoush salad dressing. This is done by adding pomegranate molasses which is a syrup-like liquid made by slowly reducing pomegranate juice until it thickens. A fattoush dressing with pomegranate molasses has added richness and sweetness that showcases its Levantine roots as it is quite popular in Middle Eastern cuisines.