Lebanese Fattoush recipe is of Arabic origin. It is made with tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn, generously drizzled with a pomegranate sauce, and sumac.
We’re taking a trip to the Middle East today with a fabulous fattoush recipe. For those that aren’t familiar with fattoush, it’s a Levantine bread salad with vegetables and herbs that vary depending on season. The only constants are the use of stale flatbreads as your base and the inclusion of sumac for a sour or tart flavor.
For a little cultural and history lesson, fattoush is, as I said, a Levantine dish. Levantine people are more from a geographical area than a specific country. They were largely from the eastern Mediterranean, essentially hailing from all the countries and islands along the Mediterranean from Greece to Cyrenaica.
For a flavor profile reference, the region shares a great deal of culinary traditions with the Turkish-Ottoman Empire. So if you’ve ever encountered a dish from Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria, or southern Turkey, then you may enjoy fattoush.
Fattoush is a traditional dish from the fatta family of dishes. Fatta simply means “crushed” or “crumbs” and the name is taken form the use of fresh, toasted, or stale flatbread either crumbled or torn into smaller pieces with ingredients piled on top.
In the case of fattoush, we’ll be using stale pita bread. So, again, this is a dish for which you may have to plan ahead by leaving the bread out to go stale. Or it could be the dish that saves you from throwing out a pita that you didn’t use in time. If you don’t want to wait around, then toasting the pita will also work well.
Sumac is the only ingredient in this dish that you may have a little trouble finding. It’s a tart, citrusy spice that you’ll probably have to visit a specialty grocery store or Middle Eastern market to find. But it’s a must for giving this dish its signature flavor.
As I mentioned, fattoush is great year round and one reason for that is that the vegetables can vary depending on season. I’m going to focus on a summer version of fattoush, but, really, you can make all kinds depending on what’s looking delicious in your grocery store’s produce department.
The last important thing to mention about this dish is because so many more people are familiar with tabbouleh than have typically eaten fattoush. In tabbouleh, the ingredients are similar, but are finely chopped and diced until they’re small enough that they mix together evenly and well. The vegetables in a fattoush recipe are cut much larger and tend to be what I’d describe as “chunks.” It makes for a very different texture and I only mention it so that you don’t make the mistake of cutting your ingredients too small. I guess I also don’t have to mention that cutting larger pieces speeds up the preparation process as well!
As always, my comments section is wide open for all your questions, concerns, and tweaks to my recipe. I hope you enjoy this fattoush recipe and I look forward to hearing how you made changes to it based on your seasonal veggies and your own personal tastes! Thanks for reading!
Fattoush recipe
PrintFATTOUSH RECIPE ( ARABIC SALAD)
- Total Time: 15 mins
- Yield: 2
Description
Lebanese Fattoush recipe is of Arabic origin. It is made with tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet corn, generously drizzled with a pomegranate sauce, and sumac.
Ingredients
- Cucumbers- 3 large
- Tomatoes- 4 large
- Lettuce ( chopped) - 1 cup
- Sweet corn- 1 cup
- Pomegranate sauce- 1 tbsp
- Lemon juice- 1 tsp
- Sumac- 1 tbsp
- Parsley( finely chopped)- 2 tbsp
- Olive Oil- 2 tbsp
- Salt- To Taste
- Black Pepper -To Taste
- Toasted pieces of pita bread- ½ cup
Instructions
- Chop cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce finely.
- In a large bowl combine all the ingredients, dress the salad with pomegranate sauce, olive oil and lemon juice. Sprinkle sumac.
- Serve with toasted pieces of pita bread.
Notes
Fattoush can be served as a side dish or you can use it as a filing in pita bread.
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Category: Salads
- Cuisine: Arabic
Keywords: fattoush, Arabic salad, salads
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This salad looks incredible!! I love the pieces of pita bread, that must add such a nice texture to the salad. Beautiful photos, too 🙂
Thank a bunch, Sarah. It is one of my favorite salad...