Chickpea Cucumber Salad

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

This salad is refreshing, crisp and filling. Cucumbers are such a great ingredient when it’s hot outside, and you’re looking for something other than lettuce in a salad.

There’s no risk of wilting because this recipe doesn’t have leafy greens. Make it for potlucks, picnics, cookouts and other summer get-togethers where food tends to sit out longer.

You can turn it into a pasta salad or a grain salad and make other additions to customize it. Try stirring in short pasta shapes or cooked grains like quinoa, barley or pearl couscous. If you have tomatoes, red peppers or other fresh vegetables, you can add them.

The Ingredients

This is what you need:

• Cucumbers: Thinner and much smaller than regular cucumbers, Persian cucumbers, also labeled as mini cucumbers, are a solid choice for salads. Their skin is more delicate, and they have fewer seeds. English cucumbers are a good substitute. You want to end up with around 3 cups of sliced cucumbers for the salad.
• Chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans, are one of my favorite canned pantry goods. Once you open the can, dump out the chickpeas into a colander and rinse them with cold water. As you pat them dry, pull off any loose skins.
• Red onions: Chop the onions finely. Then they will mix well with the rest of the ingredients.
• Feta gives the salad a salty and briny accent. You can substitute with goat cheese.
• Parsley: There are fresh herbs in every bite because the recipe calls for a quarter cup of chopped parsley. You can also use fresh dill.
• Red wine vinaigrette: I add sumac to my usual vinaigrette recipe with minced garlic, whole grain mustard, dried oregano, salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil. Sumac has a bright, tart taste.

Optional Additions

The salad is wonderful as written, but you can make one or more of the following additions:

• Quinoa, barley or pearl couscous
• Pasta, short shapes such as orecchiette
• Diced avocados
• Pitted kalamata olives, whole or chopped
• Cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes, halved
• Red bell peppers, diced
• Baby arugula or spinach

How To Make This Chickpea Cucumber Salad

1. Combine the salad ingredients in a large bowl. That includes the cucumbers, chickpeas, red onions, feta and parsley.

2. Make the vinaigrette. Stir the minced garlic, mustard, sumac, oregano, salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, lemon juice and oil in a small bowl.

3. Drizzle the vinaigrette into the salad. Toss everything together.

Serving

You can serve this cucumber chickpea salad as a side dish with BBQ tofu veggie skewers, grilled tofu shawarma or roasted mediterranean vegetables and halloumi. It is also filling enough to be a main dish salad especially if you add cooked grains or another addition from the list above.

Storage & Leftovers

You can store the salad in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days. The cucumbers will lose a little of their crispness. If you want, you can pour the salad dressing that collects in the bottom of the bowl into a separate container from the salad leftovers. This will help it maintain more of its crunch.