Turkish Shepherd Salad known as Coban salad is made with fresh summer tomatoes, cucumbers and onions. The flavors of sumac, lemon juice and olive oil make it wonderfully tasty and refreshing. Ready in 5 minutes and disappears that fast!
It is a super easy shepherd salad recipe with a super simple Turkish salad dressing. We have this light and healthy salad as a side dish. Our favorite meals to pair with it are Homemade Turkish Meatballs and kebabs.
Shepherd Salad is one of the most popular and traditional Turkish salads. Although we have it as a side dish with anything almost everyday in summer, it is mostly known as the Turkish salad for kebabs like lamb shish kebab, Adana kebab and Turkish chicken kebab.
The combination of lemon, vinegar and the spices (sumac and red pepper flakes) results in an extremely appetizing salad. We must warn you that it makes you eat more of whatever you pair it with. We don't think you would complain about this though.
What to Eat with Turkish Shepherd Salad
Today, this salad doesn’t belong to shepherds only, everyone in the country loves it because it's super easy to make and super tasty.
It is generally served with kabobs like meatballs, chicken dishes like simple roasted chicken, or even with pilaf like our bulgur pilavı. Also, this salad is served before the main dish in restaurants to keep the customers busy with the salad while they are waiting for their order.
We love to dip a piece of bread in this salad. Although we don’t want to finish it before our kabobs arrive on the table, it’s almost impossible to stop eating it. We sometimes order a second one to accompany our main course. And there is always extra vinegar and olive oil in bottles served on the table for those who want to add more of these in their salad.
Traditionally, Turkish shepherd salad is served in an oval dish and you can garnish it with a few olives before serving.
How to Make Turkish Salad Dressing
The dressing in this salad is quite versatile. There are two main ingredients: Freshly squeezed lemon juice and olive oil. You can't think of the salad without these two.
Although the other ingredients like vinegar and pomegranate molasses are optional, you can hardly see a person refusing to use these. The amount of the ingredients for dressing depends on personal taste.
You can either add these directly on the salad or make the dressing in a bowl or jar first as in our pomegranate molasses salad dressing and pour it in the salad.
Turkish Spices for The Salad
Traditionally, sumac spice is a must in this salad, but you might see salads without any spices or dressing at some restaurants. They leave it to the customers and serve some spices and dressing ingredients on the table. You decide the amounts and add each into your salad. If you are at a kebab restaurant though, the salad is completely ready.
Sumac is a very special spice and you can use it as much as you would like. Sprinkle it over chopped onions and massage them with sumac. This removes their bitterness and gives them a nice pinkish color. We even have another salad with onion and sumac named onion salad.
If you don't mind a little heat in your salad, you should add another great spice in your salad: pul biber (red pepper flakes), which is our obsession. You can easily find these at Middle Eastern markets.
Another spice Zerrin's mom loves to use in this salad is dried mint but we think it's her personal creation. We use it when we don't have fresh parsley on hand and love the taste, but it's totally optional.
What is The Origin?
The original names of dishes are as important as their flavors, so let's start with a brief explanation on the local name of the chopped Turkish salad.
This salad used to be the main dish of shepherds in Turkey, so it is called Çoban Salata, meaning shepherd's salad.
In the past, a village had generally one shepherd and everyone entrusted their cattle to him. People in that village would give shepherds some foods they produced in return. These might be wheat, flour, vegetables, fruits, molasses, dairy products, etc. Although there are still people who pay their shepherds with such foods, paying money is more common today.
A shepherd hits the trail early in the morning and takes a bundle of food with him that includes tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onions (the basic ingredients of shepherd’s salad) and a little bread.
All of these vegetables are grown in the village yard and the bread is of course made by the women of that village. He prepares a quick lunch with these. Maybe some cheese or olives accompany this easy chopped Turkish salad but nothing more.
More Turkish Salad Recipes
- Roasted Onion Salad
- Piyaz Salad
- Sumac Onions
- Patlican Salatasi (Eggplant Salad)
- Acili Ezme
- Olive Salad
- Turkish Bulgur Salad
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📖 Recipe
Turkish Shepherd Salad
A refreshing and tasty salad with just a handful of ingredients. Ready in 5 minutes!
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 4 1x
- Category: Salad
- Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped tomatoes
- ¼ cup chopped cucumber
- 2 green peppers, chopped
- 1 big onion, diced
- Half bunch of parsley
- 2 teaspoons sumac
- Olives to garnish, optional
Dressing:
- 1 lemon
- 1 tbsp vinegar
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses, optional
- ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Put the chopped vegetables in a bowl. Dice the onion in the same way, but before adding them in the bowl, massage them with sumac.
- Chop parsley and mix all of them.
- To prepare the dressing, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil, pomegranate molasses, red pepper flakes and salt. Pour it over the salad and give it a good stir. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 4
- Calories:
- Sugar:
- Sodium:
- Fat:
- Saturated Fat:
- Trans Fat:
- Carbohydrates:
- Fiber:
- Protein:
- Cholesterol:
Virginia OKeeffe says
What sort of onions do you use: brown, white or red?
Zerrin & Yusuf says
Hi Virginia,
You can use all sorts of onions. You can even add green onions if you like them.
Donna says
Served this salad along with lamb kabobs and your roasted onions. You are right, this was the first dish to disappear. I did add feta, but everything else was according to recipe. For such a simple salad, it was a smash hit!
Mg says
Made this for a party. It was more popular than any of the other dishes. Delicious. Thank you !
Zerrin & Yusuf says
So happy to hear this. It is a staple salad in Turkey. We pair almost any dish with this shepherd salad. Isn't it great when a simple salad like this becomes a hit at a party? Thanks for coming back and leaving this comment.
Cheers!
Mely Martinez says
I love this salad. Every time I make it, I have to come back to your website to make sure I'm not missing any ingredient. I also like to add Feta Cheese. And instead of Sumac, I add lime juice.
Thank you for such a perfect salad!
Yusuf says
So happy to hear that Mely! This is the go-to salad for people in Turkey. We pair with any meal. Adding feta makes it even tastier, right? Substituting lime juice for sumac is brilliant! Thank you so much for sharing your twist on the recipe!
Louise says
Hi there.. I love Çoban Salatası.. My favourite salad. Can I ask you though what measurements do you use.. Is it US or metric please. Many thanks.. I'm enjoying looking at your recipes.
Çok teşekkür ederim
Vivian Semeraro says
May I know what is pomegranate molasses in Turkish is called because they do not speak English over here 🙈. Many thanks!!
Yusuf says
Hi Vivian! It is called nar ekşisi in Turkish. Hope this helps.