Shopska Salad
A Balkan salad of chopped tomato, cucumber, pepper and onion, dressed with oil and vinegar and topped with grated white cheese.
Photograph credit: Chopska (image of Shopska salad on Wikidata Q570038) by Popo le Chien · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
A table for four in high summer, when tomatoes and cucumbers are at their best and nobody wants the oven on. Shopska salad is a Balkan classic, and its charm is that it is mostly raw vegetables and one salty cheese.
Chop the vegetables into chunks of similar size, about 2 cm. They should be big enough to bite, not diced small. Peel the cucumber if the skin is tough or waxy. Use the ripest tomatoes you can find. There is nothing in the salad to hide a pale, watery tomato.
The dressing is only oil, vinegar and salt, and it goes on just before serving. Salted vegetables release water quickly and the salad turns to soup.
The cheese is grated over the top like snow. White brined cheese such as sirene is traditional, but feta is an easy and affordable substitute. Do not stir it in, or it melts away.
The Method for Shopska Salad
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Put the tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper and onion in a large bowl.
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Dress with the oil, vinegar and salt just before serving and toss lightly.
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Pile the cheese on top without mixing it in.
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Worth Getting Right
- Choose ripe tomatoes.
- Dress the salad at the last moment.
- Grate the cheese on top.
- Serve with crusty bread to soak up the juices.
Changing the Recipe
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
What to Serve With It
Grilled meat · Crusty bread · Grilled sausages · Roasted peppers
Storage
Best eaten straight away, as it turns watery.
Shopska Salad Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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