Easy Greek Salad

by Sabrina Snyder

Last Update:

28 Comments

5 from 4 votes
4 Servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 0 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
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Easy Greek Salad is a fresh, flavorful side dish that comes together in minutes! A make-ahead option for weeknights or summer gatherings!

This Easy Greek Salad is a fresh take on a classic Salad and a colorful, flavorful side that pairs beautifully with grilled meats or Mediterranean-inspired meals. If you love non-lettuce based salads, try Tomato Salad or Panzanella Salad.

salad with pita bread on the side
close up of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and feta cheese in salad
close up of tomato, cucumber and feta salad in container
Recipe Snapshot

Why You’ll Love This Salad?

  • The perfect option to make alongside other fantastic Greek and Middle Eastern recipes, or on its own.
  • Bold flavors, simple prep, versatile serving.

Sabrina’s Easy Greek Salad Recipe

This is the kind of salad I make when I want something fresh and flavorful without spending much time in the kitchen. It’s an easy side that works with so many meals and is just as welcome at a casual weeknight dinner as it is at a summer gathering.

Recipe Card

Dinner, then Dessert

Easy Greek Salad Recipe

Easy Greek Salad is a fresh, flavorful side dish that comes together in minutes! A make-ahead option for weeknights or summer gatherings!
Yield 4 Servings
Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 0 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Course Dinner
Cuisine Greek
Author Sabrina Snyder
salad with pita bread on the side
PrintRate

Ingredients
 

  • 1/4  cup  olive oil
  • 2  tablespoons  red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/2  teaspoon  dried oregano
  • 1/4  teaspoon  kosher salt
  • 1/8  teaspoon  ground black pepper
  • 6 Persian cucumbers , halved and sliced
  • 1 pint cherry tomatoes , halved
  • 4 ounces feta cheese , crumbled in large chunks
  • 1/2 cup Kalamata olives , halved and pitted

Instructions

  • Add the olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, oregano, kosher salt and black pepper into a large bowl and whisk.
  • Add the cucumber, tomatoes, feta and olives to the bowl and toss lightly.

Nutrition

Serving: 4g | Calories: 268kcal | Carbohydrates: 10g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 24g | Saturated Fat: 7g | Cholesterol: 25mg | Sodium: 714mg | Potassium: 399mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 6g | Vitamin A: 853IU | Vitamin C: 31mg | Calcium: 185mg | Iron: 2mg

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Sabrina’s Tips

Don’t add the feta too early. For the best texture, I like to toss the salad with dressing earlier in the day and then add the feta just before serving.

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About this Recipe

Greek Salad is a popular salad option because of its easy and bold flavors. It’s full of fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, and feta in a delicious lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette. You can also add extra protein and bulk to your recipe by adding chunks of chicken or chickpea to the salad! Or add extra peppers and veggies if you like! Even better? The total time to make this dish is around 20 minutes, and 18 of them are just for chopping the vegetables.

Recipe Tips & Tricks

  • Cucumbers: Use Persian Cucumbers. They are crispier and firmer than standard cucumbers. Most cucumbers have a waxy feeling, and people tend to peel the skin. A Persian cucumber doesn’t need to be peeled. It also doesn’t have any seeds like you’d see in a normal cucumber. You can also use English Cucumbers instead of regular American cucumbers.
  • Tomatoes: I use grape Tomatoes in this recipe. They hold their seeds in instead of flooding your salad with tomato juice.
  • Feta: Use Creamy Bulgarian Feta. You can use a different variety, like Greek or French, if you’d like, but try to find a block of feta in liquid. The pre-crumbled variety is dry and flavorless compared to the fresh, creamy feta you can buy.
  • Red wine vinegar and lemon juice: Adds a punch of flavor!
  • Olives: Don’t add sliced or chopped olives to your salad. Kalamata olives add a rich, briny flavor to round out your salad.
  • Onion trick: If raw red onion is too harsh for you, place the chopped red onions in a bowl of ice water for 10 minutes before removing and drying them. This will remove some of the raw onion bite from them.

Pairing Suggestions

There are many pairing options for this delicious salad, such as Falafel, Hummus, Pickled Turnips, Greek Meatballs, Greek Chicken and Rice, Greek Pastitsio, and my super popular Copycat Halal Chicken and Rice.

How to Store

  • Serve: Don’t leave your salad at room temperature for more than 2 hours. 
  • Store: This salad is best served fresh, you can keep it in the fridge for 2-3 days. Keep the dressing and the salad separate if you’re planning on storing some so that the salad remains as fresh as possible. Cover it tightly in plastic wrap or put it in an airtight container to store in the fridge. 
  • Freeze: You can store salad for up to 3 months. Just make sure to seal it in an airtight container first. Let the salad thaw, then you can add a fresh dressing over the top. 

Ideas to Serve

This Greek salad dressing recipe also works great as a marinade for meat. You can let your chicken marinate for 2 hours before grilling. Due to the fresh lemon juice in the recipe, this homemade dressing lasts 1-2 weeks in the refrigerator.

Greek Vinaigrette Marinade

  • 1/4  cup  extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/2  teaspoon  dried oregano
  • 1/4  teaspoon  kosher salt
  • 1/8  teaspoon  ground black pepper
  • Add the ingredients and whisk well before dressing your salad.
  • If you want a more thoroughly emulsified dressing, you’d need to add a creamier fat like mayonnaise.

Variations

  • Greek Salad with Chicken: Add grilled chicken to the salad (marinated with lemon zest, olive oil, kosher salt and pepper)
  • Heartier Version: Add tortellini to the mix, but double the dressing, as the pasta will soak up more than you’d think. Or, check out my Easy Greek Pasta Salad
  • Fattoush: To make a makeshift “fattoush” salad, toss the salad with pita chips and top with sumac seasoning.
  • Greens: Add some lettuce or arugula to add fresh greens to the salad.
  • Peppers: You can bulk up the salad more with bell peppers, too; red would be the best as they’d add sweetness, but green would work too. Just know green bell peppers would add a hint of bitter flavor to your Greek salad in a way no other ingredients in the recipe would.
  • Veggie Lovers: Check out my Greek Rainbow Vegetable Salad to see a much more veggie heavy recipe!
  • Roasted Greek Salad: Use a recipe for roasted veggies (the best use for this salad would be red onions, red bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, green bell peppers, zucchini, grape tomatoes, eggplant) then let them cool, toss them with the Greek Salad Dressing, and top with Kalamata olives and feta.

More Fresh Summer Salads

Greek Salad pin image

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the cookbook Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients, published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. I LOVE this as a healthy alternative to summer salad. We live oluves, so I add a dew extra olives. So easy to make, versatile and delicious. So happy I found this recipe.

    Reply

  2. Very easy recipe to make. MY KIDS LOVED IT! I doubled the recipe and didn’t even put salad dressing on it. Very healthy and filling. This is our get together recipe every time.

    Reply

  3. Hi Sabrina, I followed your recipe to make a huge salad for dinner along with a main dish of course. My hubby and teen age son devoured it! I was hoping for some leftover for lunch the next day but noooo. Thank you for sharing this recipe with the world.

    Reply

    1. You’re welcome, Ann. I’m so glad you all enjoyed it. I guess you should double the recipe next time, haha!

      Reply

  4. Tasty, but the amount of oil seamed excessive. I’d cut it by half and add as needed. In to the fresh dill, I added some fresh Italian basil and a bit of time… Because I’m a rebel.

    Reply

      1. This is PERFECT for meal prep for the week! To have a healthy salad in the fridge for a lunch or snack is key.
        It’s lasts for 3 days and the tomatoes dont get bad. I do leave out the cucumbers, and also add dried basil. I can make a triple/quadruple recipe for literally $15 of ingredients from Costco. That is the cost of 1 salad and drink from Panera… (1 lb feta cheese $4.50, 2 lb ‘juno bites’ cherry tomatoes $4.50, 1 jar kalamata olives $6.50) I am buying these ingredients every trip, from now on! And making it every week!
        And it’s sooo healthy and filling!!!! I do keto and this fits in my dietary restrictions. may the Lord Jesus Bless you.

        Reply

  6. If you were making this ahead of time- would you wait to mix the dressing with the veggies until just before serving? or would you make it all together and keep it all in the fridge until ready to serve? Thanks!!

    Reply

    1. I would probably do it right before because it’s so easy to put together but this can definitely be made ahead of time and refrigerated with no issue.

      Reply

  7. Good stuff! If you like feta and you like Calmata olives, you’ll like it. It’s delicious, healthy, economical and super easy to put together.
    It’s a win for me.

    Reply

  13. Hi Sabrina! Your Easy Greek Salad looks so tasty and refreshing! I love how colorful your photos are! Great work!! 🙂

    Reply