Israeli Chopped Salad with Pomegranate Molasses Vinaigrette and Yemenite Ja’ala {Roasted, spiced nuts and seeds}

Israeli Salad is a delicious, fresh mix of vegetables and herbs chopped into very small pieces so that every bite contains a variety of flavors and textures. This version of the classic salad is dressed with Pomegranate Vinaigrette and a handful of crunchy Ja’ala (roasted spiced nut and seed mix).

A few months ago I purchased Shuk, a cookbook about Israeli Home Cooking, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite cookbooks largely because of the salad recipes. The entire book has a strong emphasis on fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables, and whole foods. (A “Shuk” is an Israeli marketplace with an overabundance of fresh produce.) It also contains a vast amount of information about Israeli cooking and culture that I’m finding enormously enjoyable.

But it’s the salads in the book have captured my heart. And my tastebuds. As you may or may not know, my career in recipe development began with baking. Of Batter and Dough is my first love and a website that continues to provide me with endless excuses to get in the kitchen and create classic, tried-and-true recipes for the home baker.

But, one must not live on cake alone. My ideal diet includes a hearty amount of plant based meals, a little bit of meat and poultry, plenty of grains, some homemade bread, and dessert at least a couple of times a week.

We might have fresh baked cookies on the counter, but we also have at least 2 or 3 salads in the refrigerator. If I were to compile a list of my all-time favorite dishes, it would include things like carnitas, short ribs, and spaghetti and meatballs. But, the majority of our meals in this house are meatless.

I do not find this kind of balance easy. And, we often fail. But I can honestly say that it’s the goal.

One thing I’ve discovered is that I am considerably more likely to eat a lot of veggies if there is at least one or two salads in the refrigerator, prepared and ready to eat. Many of my poorer food choices are the direct result of hungrily searching around the kitchen for something to eat right now and not having ready-to-go healthy choices at hand. So, twice a week, I do my best to chop some veggies and toss them together into a big salad that can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days and dished out as needed.

But, the most important commandment to eating more veggies on the regular?

Your Salad Shall Not Be Boring or Flavorless

I read once that the reason iceberg lettuce became synonymous with “dinner salad” in this country is because it was the first kind of fresh produce we managed to ship across the country year round. Getting fresh produce in the dead of winter might have been a novelty in 1920, but in 2020 it’s the norm. There is no excuse for boring, flavorless salad.

One of the simplest ways to make any salad more interesting is to simply cut the veggies into very small pieces. The classic Israeli Chopped Salad is the perfect example. The salad is simply a mix of chopped carrots, red bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers with a handful or so of fresh herbs thrown in for good measure. If you cut the vegetables into large chunks, each bite would be monotonous – a bite of carrot, a bite of cucumber, a bite of tomato.

But, chop the veggies into very small pieces and every single bite becomes an interesting collage of flavors and textures.

A bowl and spoon kind of salad that will keep for a couple of days.

I am not joking when I say that I’ve been making this salad twice a week for months. It makes a great side dish to pretty much anything we happen to be eating on any given night. But, most of the time I have it for lunch, eating it exactly as pictured, with a bowl and spoon.

Since the veggies are chopped into pieces about the size of a kidney bean, eating it with a spoon ensures that you’ll get a mouthful of all the different flavors at once.

In Shuk, the authors emphasize that Israeli Salad is best eaten super fresh, immediately after preparing it. I disagree. I feel that it’s equally delicious the next day, and even the day after that. Even more importantly, I know myself well enough to know that I would eat a LOT less salad if I didn’t prepare it in big batches to be enjoyed over the course of several days.

The trick is to store the roasted nuts (ja’ala) separately. Chop the veggies, toss them with the dressing, and keep the whole thing in a covered container in the refrigerator. Store the nuts in a zip top bag or other air-tight container in the pantry and sprinkle them on your salad right before you eat it. If you toss the nuts with the salad ahead of time, they’ll just get soggy.

Yemenite Ja’ala {Roasted, Spiced Nuts and Seeds} and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Israeli Salad is not traditionally served with nuts or any other kind of topping. Also, it’s usually simply dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. But, at the moment, I’m having a love affair with Pomegranate Vinaigrette and this amazing snack called Yemenite Ja’ala, so that’s how I’m eating bowl after bowl of Israeli Salad.

Yeminite Ja’ala is another gem from Shuk. It’s simply a mix of nuts and seeds, tossed together with some olive oil and spices and then roasted. After making batch after batch, I’ve settled into a recipe that works well for my oven and my tastebuds and now almost always have a bag of it in the pantry, ready to be sprinkled over anything my heart desires, or simply eaten by the handful as a delicious snack.

Like Ja’ala, Pomegranate Vinaigrette only takes a couple of minutes to prepare and keeps well. I usually make a large batch, keeping it in a jar in the refrigerator and drizzling it over salads and roasted or sautéed vegetables.

Traditionally, Israeli Salad contains raw onions. I find that raw onions are too pungent and have a way of overpowering the other veggies in this salad. Instead, I like to add chopped shallots to the pomegranate vinaigrette. Vinegar softens and rounds out the flavor of the shallots and the oil in the vinaigrette helps distribute their flavor throughout the entire salad. The effect is a distinct, yet subtle onion flavor that supports the other flavors in this salad instead of covering them up.

Other delicious (optional) additions to Israeli Salad:

Top the salad with crumbled feta or goat cheese right before serving
Slice a hard boiled egg over the top of the salad
Sprinkle on a handful of crispy, crumbled bacon
Toss in some roasted chicken
Add cooked grains such as rice, couscous, bulgur, or millet

Useful tools and resources for making Israeli Salad:

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Mevell Large Walnut Cutting Board. This is my favorite every day cutting board and the board you see pictured in many of the photos here. It’s thick and sturdy, and beautiful enough to leave out on my countertop all the time. I keep it resting on a space right between the sink and the stove, at the ready for chopping anything I need.
Simple Homemade Pomegranate Vinaigrette recipe
Yemenite Ja’ala recipe {Roasted, spiced nuts and seeds for topping Israeli Salad}
Homemade Pomegranate Molasses (for the vinaigrette)
Eat Well Pomegranate Molasses (for the vinaigrette, if you don’t want to make it yourself)

Other recipes you might like:

Weekly Meal Plans that Incorporate Israeli Salad:

Winter Meal Plan, #11

If you give this recipe a try, let me know! Leave a comment, rate it, or take a picture and tag it #alittleandalot on Instagram.

Israeli Salad with Pomegranate Vinaigrette and Roasted Nuts

Author: RebeccaBlackwell
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 6 servings

Print Recipe

Description

Ingredients

3 large carrots
2 red bell peppers (any other color is fine)
1 English cucumber
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 cup chopped fresh Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
About 1/2 cup Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Salt and pepper to taste
1–2 cups Yemenite Ja’ala (Roasted, spiced nuts and seeds)

Instructions

Peel the carrots and chop off the ends. Slice each carrot into thirds, then cut each section in half. Slice each half into matchstick like slices that are about 1/4-inch wide. Chop the matchstick slices into 1/4-inch pieces. (*See images above for a visual reference for chopping the carrots, peppers, and cucumber.)
Slice off the tops and stems of the peppers and remove all the seeds. Cut each pepper in half, then slice each half into 1/4-inch wide slices. Chop slices into pieces that are about the size of a pea.
Follow the same pattern with the cucumber: cut off the ends, cut the cucumber into thirds, cut each piece in half, then cut each half into 1/4-inch slices. Dice the slices into 1/4-inch pieces.
Add all the veggies to a large bowl along with the chopped parsley. Toss to mix. Pour in about 1/2 cup of Pomegranate Vinaigrette and toss to coat. Taste and add more salt and pepper, or more vinaigrette, if desired.
Refrigerate the salad in a covered container for up to 3 days. Serve topped with a handful of Ja’ala.

Keywords: salad, Israeli Salad, chopped salad, fresh, healthy, vegetarian, vegan, dinner salad, side salad