Mediterranean Green Olive Salad

This Green Olive Salad is a summery salad packed with fresh ingredients and Mediterranean flavors. Sumac, pomegranate molasses and lemon juice make it a mouthwateringly tangy salad that is perfect to serve on a party table. It is quite satisfying and makes a wonderful light summer lunch too.

This post was originally published in 2009 and we are updating it with new pictures and additional information.

Most of you will probably find it weird but we have this green olive salad at breakfast. That’s right, with all those onions! The tartness of the salad helps you wake up. Moreover, it gives you a good appetite and you want to eat more!

Luckily, my parents are living in the South of Turkey, where there are huge olive orchards. They always bring brined green olives to us. Mom prepares them herself every summer because she knows well that I have a weakness for the green olives. They make a wonderful snack at any time of the day. I never feel lazy to make this simple green olive salad for a weekend breakfast.

Just like any homemade food, green olives taste better when you brine them at home. I wrote a blog post about How To Brine Olives a while ago. It can really help you a lot if you want to brine your own green olives.

How to make green olive salad

First of all, remove the pits of green olives to make this healthy olive salad. Secondly, chop the onion and massage with sumac and salt. Then simply chop the tomatoes and herbs and combine everything in a bowl.

Besides the summer flavors in it, what makes this salad so good is the simple dressing made with lemon juice, pomegranate molasses and olive oil. Whisk these three and pour it over the salad and stir well.

One important tip about this salad

There is an important step when preparing onions for the salad. Dice or slice them as thick or thin as you’d like. Sprinkle a little salt and one teaspoon (or more if you like) sumac on them. Massage them with your hand well. This will remove the bitterness of onions and they will have a nice flavor.

If you can’t even tolerate the idea of onions, then leave them out. This Green Olive Salad would still be tasty but I highly recommend that you first give it a try as it is.

Our Favorite Breakfast Foods

You might have heard about Turkish style breakfast, which includes several sweet and savory dishes served in small portions. As Turkish people, we love to create recipes for breakfast because a slice of a cake like this amazing Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread is never enough for us at breakfast. Therefore, salads like this one definitely brings a great excitement to our weekend mornings. Believe it or not, this green olive salad becomes the star of the table and everyone wants to have more whenever I make it.

Here are a few more recipes that we love to have in the mornings while most of you wouldn’t:

Turkish Menemen, a simple one-pan dish with eggs, tomatoes and green peppers.

Meatless Stuffed Grape Leaves, with lots of olive oil for sure.

Turkish Potato Salad with herbs, eggs and onion.

Watermelon Feta Mint Salad, a super refreshing salad.

Would you eat these in the morning? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please share your answers in the comments section below.

The richer the breakfast table is, the happier the Turkish people get. We love to see all these foods at breakfast. Not to mention various cheeses, breads, jams, honey, butter and nuts.

Do you love green olives and want more recipes with it? Here are a few more:

Green Olive Dip – Garnish with Lemon

Lentil Salad with Green Olives – Kalyn’s Kitchen

Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade – Give Recipe

Below is the picture of the original post from 2009 when we started this blog and had no idea about food photography. We don’t want to delete the pictures from our old posts because they remind us how much experience we’ve had since then.

See our other recipe videos here:

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