You may be looking at that picture and thinking, “But where is the falafel?” Well, it’s not a salad with falafel, it’s a salad made out of falafel ingredients. Falafel Salad, get it?
You see, I was really craving my falafel the other day, but I was too lazy to make the little patties or fry them. So, I wondered what all of the ingredients would taste like just thrown together in a bowl. Pretty damn good, that’s how it tastes.
I had to do a little tweaking, but all in all this Falafel Salad is super amazing. Instead of regular salad greens, it starts with a bed of fresh parsley and cilantro. Those two herbs are what make the falafel taste so amazing and fresh. Chickpeas add body to the salad and bulgur wheat gives extra texture. Fresh tomatoes went into the mix to make it a little more salad-like, and I would have added diced cucumber if the selection at the store hadn’t looked so pitiful (wrinkly cucumbers are so sad). I had to find a way to get all of the falafel spices into the salad, so I mixed them right into a basic tahini lemon dressing (because you’d probably drizzle some tahini over the falafel anyway, right?). The tahini dressing was so zingy with its fresh garlic that I skipped the red onion that is in the original falafel recipe. It wasn’t missed. The end result was so amazing that I didn’t have time to notice the onion’s absence.
I’m totally IN LOVE with this Falafel Salad and can see myself making it at least once a week, if not only as an excuse to eat this amazing dressing. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a jar of the tahini dressing in my fridge at all times.
NOTE: If you can’t find bulgur, you can use couscous, or even quinoa as a gluten-free option.
Falafel Salad
Servings 4 to 6Ingredients
TAHINI DRESSING
- 1/3 cup tahini sesame seed paste ($1.08)
- 1/3 cup water ($0.00)
- 1/4 cup lemon juice ($0.18)
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled ($0.16)
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin ($0.05)
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper ($0.03)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
SALAD
- 1 bunch flat leaf parsley ($0.89)
- 1 bunch cilantro ($0.85)
- 1 19oz. can chickpeas ($1.50)
- 1/2 cup uncooked bulgur ($0.77)
- 2 tomatoes (about ¾ lb.) ($0.75)
Instructions
- To make the dressing, smash the garlic cloves under the blade of a knife or roughly chop them. Add the garlic, tahini, water, lemon juice, cumin, cayenne, and salt to a blender. Blend until the mixture is smooth and the garlic is in small pieces. Refrigerate the dressing until ready to use.
- To cook the bulgur, place the dry bulgur in a sauce pot. Cook and stir the dry bulgur (without water or oil) over medium heat for two minutes to toast it slightly. Add one cup of water and bring the mixture up to a boil. Add a lid to the pot, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, fluff the bulgur and transfer it to the refrigerator without a lid to cool.
- Wash the parsley and cilantro well under cool water. Shake as much water off as possible. Pull the leaves from the stems and then roughly chop the leaves. Place the chopped parsley and cilantro in a bowl.
- Dice the tomato and add it to the bowl. Rinse and drain the chickpeas, then add them to the bowl. Finally, add the cooled bulgur to the boil and stir to combine the ingredients. Add a liberal amount of the tahini dressing and stir until everything is well coated.
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Notes
Nutrition
Have you tried this recipe?Mention @budgetbytes or tag #budgetbytes on Instagram!How to Make Falafel Salad – Step by Step Photos
Make the tahini dressing first, so that the flavors have a few minutes to blend while you’re making the rest of the salad. Smash or roughly chop two cloves of garlic, then add them to a blender with 1/3 cup tahini, 1/3 cup water, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, and 1/2 tsp salt. Blend the ingredients until smooth and no large chunks of garlic remain. Refrigerate the dressing until ready to use.
Next, it’s time to cook the bulgur. Again, if you can’t find bulgur (I got mine from the bulk bins at the grocery), you can use couscous or quinoa. I used 1/2 cup of dry bulgur for this salad.
Toast the bulgur slightly before cooking it to make it a little more scrumptious. Just add it to a small sauce pot and cook and stir over medium heat for about two minutes. Because there is no moisture in the pot at this point, it will toast the grains. Finally, add a cup of water, let it come back up to a boil (which will be fast because the pot is already hot), then add a lid and turn the heat down to low. Let it simmer on low for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, fluff the bulgur then let it sit in the fridge for about 5-10 minutes to cool. Leave the lid off while it’s in there so the excess moisture evaporates away. That way you’ll have nice little chewy bits, rather than sticky wet bits.
Now on to the vegetables… Wash the one bunch of parsley and one bunch of cilantro well. Nothing ruins a salad faster than sand. Try to get as much of the water off as possible. Pull the leaves from the stems. The stems are soft and edible, too, so you don’t have to be very precise about this. Just pull what you can off.
Give the leaves a rough chop. I probably should have chopped mine just a bit finer, but it’s all good.
Dice two small tomatoes (yes, mine were on sale).
Rinse and drain one 19oz. can of chickpeas. If you can’t find the 19oz. size can, you can just use a 15oz. can, or if you want extra chickpeas, go for the gold and use two 15oz. cans.
Add the cilantro, parsley, chickpeas, tomatoes, and cooled bulgur to a bowl and stir them all together.
Now remember that amazing dressing? OMG it’s so good…
Pour it ALL over the salad. Honestly, the more dressing the better with this one. I used about half of the batch of dressing… and still kinda wanted more.
And then stir it all up so that everything is drenched in that amazing dressing. NOW EAT.
This made about 5 cups of Falafel Salad. Four large servings or six smaller side salad type servings. Of course, if your bunches of parsley and cilantro are different sizes than mine, you may get a different yield. Either way, I could have probably eaten at least half the batch in one sitting because it was so good. RESTRAIN YOURSELF, BETH.
I’m eating this right now, dying from how good it is. My store was out of fresh parsley, so I used chopped spinach and dried parsley. I also used quick-cook couscous and added 1/2 a cucumber. Holy crap, just how. I was thinking about halving the batch since it’s just me who will eat it, but I’m so glad I made the whole recipe. The flavors will mingle even more in the fridge and I’m guessing it’ll keep for about 5 days? Also gotta mention the texture combo is amazing, revved my poor appetite right up.
I am so excited to make this! Although my name is also Beth, so when you said RESTRAIN YOURSELF, BETH at the end there, it made me giggle.
I made this today and it was wonderful! You were right, I didn’t cut my herbs enough and it really does make a difference, next time I’ll pay more attention! I took another commenters advice and added a little bit of feta ($1.99 at Aldi) and that made it extra good.
Quick q: can u substitute millet in for the bulgur? Ive been using it in lieu of quinoa because its cheaper and couscous because its a whole grain.
Probably, yes! I really haven’t done much cooking with millet, so I’m not sure how it would turn out, but I bet just about any small grain could be used in this.
This is such a fabulous, fresh salad, Beth! I’ve posted this one on my food blog (http://delectablemorsels.com/2014/06/24/beths-falafel-salad) with a link to your recipe.
It’s absolutely delicious and just perfect for a hot June day.
Thanks!
Sooo, it was really good, but my dressing ended up super thick. Like, it’s the consistency of peanut butter instead of dressing. Is there something I needed to do differently to it, and do you have any recommendations for making it more dressing-y? I feel like I used a weird brand of tahini (it was really badly separated when I opened it, and I needed to process it to even get it to a uniform consistency).
Yes, definitely make sure the tahini is well stirred before you begin (it should be thinner than peanut butter once fully mixed. It should slowly drip off a spoon, like honey). Also, did you add the 1/3 cup water to the dressing? If that isn’t enough to make it dressing-like, you can always add in more water. :)
Sounds so yummy. Unfortunatly, since I live in the sticks and the nearest sizable store is 30 minutes away, I’m going to have to wait to try this. Looks like its a supper yummy supper easy salad for hot summer days.
This recipe was so good! I couldn’t stop eating it, probably my favorite budget bytes recipe! Good for lunch or a side with dinner.
I’m not sure if this allows embedded images, but I took a photo. The light isn’t so good in here and the iPhone wasn’t really made for food photography (although you’d never know it by the looks of my Facebook news feed every day), but worth sharing.
It was also worth running back out to the store for the cucumber!
[IMG]http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b230/FreckleFoot/4ff978e98fe814fb66a95b73a51943fb.jpg[/IMG]
If that doesn’t work, here’s a photo link.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b230/FreckleFoot/4ff978e98fe814fb66a95b73a51943fb.jpg
Seriously awesome, Beth. This is my new favorite thing. It was like Long Island Greek diner food in a majorly good way!
OMG, that looks amazing!
Thanks! It WAS amazing. Also. Today is day 4 and because if prior social commitments, we still have leftovers and they’re still fine. A tad bit soggier, but all the flavors are perfectly married now.
So, I am finally getting around to making this today. It has just been too hot here in my second-floor Long Island apartment. I can’t bear to do any real cooking today, and this is perfect.
My only nitpicky thing is, I wish that you would have included cucumbers in the list of ingredients even though you didn’t end up using them for your photographed meal. I copied/pasted the ingredients into my phone, and when I was at the supermarket I meant to get the cucumbers, and then forgot because I got sidetracked and they weren’t on my list. My fault; but I think the cukes would be great in this, so maybe add them to the list of ingredients for other boneheads like me?
To make it a complete meal, I marinated some boneless skinless chicken breasts in an eyeballed-measurement rendition of your Greek marinated chicken marinade (with cumin and cayenne added, too). I’ll grill those on the stovetop and hopefully won’t heat the house too much. I’ll slice them and toss in top of the salad.
I can easily pre-assign 5 stars to this because I tried the dressing already and it’s great! So thanks for another winner!
1) I LOVE Falafel. I have a little Middle-Eastern Deli not far where I live, where in the mood hits me, I head that way (and it hits often enough that when they see me walk in the door, they get my basic order ready while I drool over other items to take away with me). But I find it WAY to labor intensive to make it at home, for one (and I’ve tried). This was perfect. I had the urge to go to my deli, but LOL, at 103 degrees, I wasn’t fond of the idea of getting in the car and driving to the deli. I had all of the ingredients at hand, even the bulgur strangely enough (the fates were with me when I bought the wrong item at the store last week). YUM!! This maybe my new favorite “it’s too hot to cook, I want a salad” go-to salad. Once again, Budget Bytes and Beth has successfully treated me to a new ‘goodie’.
Wow!!! I made the homemade tahini you posted and used that for this dressing, used red quinoa instead of bulgur (and doubled the amount, just because), added feta and it is definitely going to be on frequent rotation. So good!!! Thank you!!
The dressing here is wonderful! I was completely shocked at how good it turned out. I am thinking about other dishes that I could make with the dressing here. It may go well together with grilled chicken as a marinade/topping? I also used red chili powder instead of cayenne and it was delish. Thanks again for another great recipe!
I totally agree with Brianna, this reminded me of tabbouleh, except the dressing fixes the problem I couldn’t ever put my finger on figuring out why I don’t like tabbouleh! It’s the dryness. The dressing fixes this completely, and made me devour it.
I made a few tweaks: I added jullienned spinach and cucumber to bulk up the saladness of this. I added ground coriander to the dressing, which adds brightness. And I did couscous instead of bulgar, because it’s what I had on hand.
Yum!
Beth, I so love your creativity! I would never have thought of this…but now thinking of all kinds of dishes where I could just… eat…. the… ingredients. Awesome.