Best Traditional Turkish Salads: From the Tables of Sultans to your Home
Salads have a special place in Turkish cuisine and are almost ubiquitous on Turkish tables.
Turkish salads have a very unique sour balance created by the exceptional natural resources available. Sumac spice and sumac sour-syrup bring out the flavor of salads, especially onions, and pomegranate and pomegranate molasses can also be added, along with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds.
Let’s round-up some of the most popular salads in Turkish cuisine.
1. Çoban Salata (Sheperd’s Salad)
Whether due to its ease of preparation or its delicious flavor, Çoban Salata is undeniably the most popular salad in Turkey.
Çoban Salata is made with chopped tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper, and parsley, served with olive oil, lemon, and salt.
2. Fresh, seasonal salad
A seasonal salad in Turkey is typically made by grating or thinly slicing vegetables like carrots, radishes, red cabbage, and lettuce, and is dressed with the classic trio of lemon, olive oil, and salt.
3. Turkish Spoon Salad
Spoon salad is a finely chopped version of the ingredients found in shepherd’s salad. Its dressing is distinct, featuring pomegranate syrup and dried mint.
4. Gavurdağı Salad
Add sumac and walnuts to the spoon salad and you have Gavurdağı salad. The walnuts give Gavurdağı salad its distinctive taste, setting it apart from other Turkish salads.
5. Bostana Salad
Bostana salad contains the same basic ingredients as other Turkish salads but it has more tomatoes, and it is more liquid and quite spicier than others.
6. Hot Ezme
Another Turkish salad made with the same main ingredients is hot ezme. Despite the name “ezme,” which means to crush, it actually refers to the salad being finely chopped into small pieces.
7. Purslane Salad
Salads made with greens in Turkish cuisine extend beyond just lettuce, arugula, curly cress, and sorrel. Fresh purslane, especially when harvested from the garden in summer, is a common ingredient for salads. Two popular purslane salads frequently grace summer tables.
One version features purslane mixed with tomatoes, onions, and pomegranate syrup, offering a delightful balance of sour flavors. The other combines purslane with garlic and yogurt, providing a refreshing and cooling effect.
In my opinion, purslane salad is one of the most delicious dishes in the world.
8. Turkish Potato Salad
Of course, it is impossible to imagine Turkey’s most popular root vegetables not being used in salads. Carrots, celery, and potatoes all play different roles in salads, influenced by various cooking and chopping techniques. Nevertheless, they are all highly valued in Turkish cuisine.
Potato salad appears in almost every food culture, but the Turkish potato salad is something special. Here is the recipe.
9. Manca: Roasted Eggplant and Pepper Salad
In Turkey, it’s unanimously agreed that roasted vegetable salads taste even better when the vegetables are cooked over an open fire. These salads are the favorites at large picnics and weekend summer barbecues.
The most famous roasted pepper and eggplant salads can be found in every region of Turkey. However, don’t assume they always go by the same name. Sometimes, even within the same city, this salad may be known by different names.
10. Piyaz with Tahini (White Beans with Tahini)
Legume salads, such as white beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, broad beans, and black-eyed peas, are a popular choice in Turkish cuisine.
When seasoned with olive oil and vinegar, combined with thinly sliced red onion and finely chopped parsley, you’ll get all the pleasure you could ever get from a salad. Increase the amount of protein with slices a boiled egg, and it turns into a satisfying lunch.
The most popular salad of this kind is white beans salad (piyaz) with tahini (it’s also the most delicious one).
11. Spinach or Eggplant Borani
Yogurt has overwhelmingly taken over Turkish culinary culture and found a place in almost every salad. We love yogurt, and we’re proud of it. One such salad is spinach or eggplant borani (nothing to do with the Middle Eastern stew).
12. Tarator
Tarator, a word that also changed meaning as it entered Turkish vocabulary, is also a yogurt salad, made with zucchini or carrots (i.e. carrot tarator). Tarator is popular in Istanbul, the capital of the former Ottoman Empire, and borani is common in Anatolia. The names are historical and have stuck until the present day.
13. Fruit Salad
You can call it a fruit platter, but no one can argue that a huge plate of mixed sliced fruit is not a fruit salad. It’s the most customary way of consuming fruit in Turkey, and it is usually served as the last meal of the day. Especially when you have guests over, a peeled and sliced fruit salad is served to conclude the evening.
14. Salad with Aegean herbs
When considering dining by the sea in Turkey, several locations stand out. The magnificent Bosphorus is one such place, as are the islands offering stunning views of Istanbul from the Sea of Marmara. Additionally, the Aegean coast captivates with the salty scent of the sea and the invigorating freshness of the air.
The main food eaten by the sea is, of course, fish! If there’s one dish that adds to the deliciousness of salads, it’s fish. It may go well with other dishes, but it is unacceptable for a table with fish to be without a salad. Salads made from fresh Aegean herbs sometimes even precede the fish.
Lettuce, arugula, parsley, dill, fresh mint, tomato, cucumber, green onion, white onion, red onion, radish, peppers, red cabbage, carrots… There are countless more ingredients that go into our salads. Combining these in different combinations and chopped with varying techniques makes a different salad.
Dressings for this type of salad are usually freshly squeezed lemon juice, salt, and olive oil. While you may be used to a whisked up vinaigrette, the more common approach here is to add them one by one and then mix the salad.
Salad dressing is not limited to these three ingredients; grape molasses, apple cider vinegar, and grape vinegar are also common.
How salads are served in Turkish cuisine
Salads are one of the building blocks of Turkish cuisine. To explain their significance in the Turkish cuisine we first touch on the details and flow of meals in Turkey.
Let’s start with breakfast. Turkish breakfasts generally don’t have a flow of food or a particular order.
All of the food is presented on the table and remains throughout the meal, including a salad plate. This salad plate – söğüş – is usually served with olive oil drizzled on coarsely sliced vegetables sprinkled with salt. In summer, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, and in winter, carrots, and radishes take their place on breakfast tables.
Hot soup is often a starter for classic lunch or dinner, and salad and bread are always on the table. Until the soup is served, everyone will have at least tasted the salad. At the same time, those with more of an appetite “dip bread in the juices”. There are also timeless salads. They are not usually served with main meals but accompany afternoon tea, or are serve when hosting guests.
This may seem odd, but even if guests haven’t been invited, Turkish people will always have some sort of dish to offer.
Even at a dinner party, at least one type of salad, pastry, and dessert is served “with the tea” after the meal is over.
Salads being available in fast-food joints or street-food vendors may also be an odd concept to you; there is even a very common, delicious, and fulfilling food salad in Turkey! Since we go into the details in the article, let’s leave the rest as a surprise.
Salad is a colorful dish that sometimes amazes by its appearance alone, making you impatient to get eating and giving a pleasant feeling of happiness at the dinner table. One of the things that makes the Turkish people so lucky is the plethora of variety of this fantastic food. Many of these salads can also be found in the Turkish meze.
Mezes are appetizers that can be found on almost every dinner table but are mainly eaten gradually throughout the meal and are usually accompanied by alcoholic beverages.
You might assume that alcoholic beverages are not very common in the Middle East, but, believe me, dinner tables accompanied by drinks are a culture in Turkey.
Raki, for example, is an alcoholic beverage that is not consumed on its own. It has its own culture and cuisine: the raki table. This table has two must-haves, friends and mezes.
Turkey is a country where every opportunity is used to come together, celebrate, and eat. Huge meals are eaten at celebratory events such as weddings, circumcisions, a baby’s first tooth, a baby’s 40th day in the world, and for religious holidays.
Along with rice pilaf and meat, salad is always served at these events. Most of these dishes have symbolic meanings, representing fertility or abundance. In addition to being extraordinarily rich in terms of vegetables, greens, and fresh herbs, Anatolia also has fertile soils for the cultivation of vegetables that are not indigenous to Anatolia. This means we are able to cultivate hundreds of different vegetables, legumes, and grains.
