hello my friends it's danny and today i am sharing a beautiful bright delicious mediterranean chickpea salad now this salad is layered with garbanzo beans avocado feta cheese and lots of fresh vegetables and herbs it would be perfect for a barbecue or a cookout and it also works really well for meal prep you can easily make a big batch of this on the weekend and then have it as a head start ingredient ready to go for a busy week so i'm going to start by making the salad dressing for this recipe which is a lemon vinaigrette
now traditionally a vinaigrette is made three parts oil to one part acid but personally i like a one to one ratio it just makes for a lighter brighter more tart dressing which i really enjoy so into a small bowl or a mason jar i'm gonna combine a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil one quarter cup fresh squeezed lemon juice a half a teaspoon dijon mustard that's going to act as our emulsifier then i have one fat clove of crushed garlic and a half a teaspoon of sea salt along with a quarter teaspoon of black
pepper you can whisk that up or if you're doing this in a jar like i am just pop on the lid and give it a good shake and then we will set that aside until we're ready to dress our salad now to get started with the salad i'm going to start by draining out the chickpeas which are also known as garbanzo beans into a fine mesh strainer and then we will give it a rinse under some cold water that just helps to rinse off any excess sodium then i'm going to transfer those beans into a
nice big bowl and i'm adding in one english cucumber now remember english cucumbers are the cucumbers that have this nice thin skin and they're seedless so they have a great crunchy texture and they work really well on salads like this i like to just trim off the ends slice slice it in half lengthwise come back across the other way so my cucumber is in quarters and then i just come right down and create little bite-size pieces then i have two cups of diced bell peppers now i love to use two different colors i'm using yellow
and orange the more color the more vibrancy the more beautiful the salad the more appealing it is so of course you could use one color but it is more fun with two and to cut my peppers all i do is i like to slice off each side of the pepper i like to call these the pepper cheeks along with the bottom and then take each cheek and slice it into strips come back across the other way and you've got a chopped pepper then i have a half a cup of kalamata olives and i like to
slice these in half as well these add a really rich buttery texture to the salad and then finally a half cup of crumbled feta cheese now remember whenever possible you want to try to buy your feta in block form it's going to have better flavor and better texture than if you were to buy it pre-crumbled because it doesn't require any stabilizers or any anti-caking agents and then for this salad i also love adding a chopped avocado there are a few things you want to keep in mind with the avocado though you don't want an avocado
that is super ripe because it's going to get really mushy in your salad so you want an avocado that's still a little bit firm and just ripe and also if you don't plan on eating the salad right away i would save the avocado keep it on the side and then chop it up and add it to your salad when you're ready to serve the salad this way you don't run the risk of the avocado getting brown and mushy and then finally we're just going to finish this salad with some fresh chopped herbs i have a
couple tablespoons of chopped up mint and a couple tablespoons of fresh chopped basil you will see that fresh herbs will always elevate a dish so if you want something to taste extra fabulous add some fresh herbs on the flip side if you don't have the time or the desire to deal with the fresh herbs just sub in one tablespoon of dried oregano you can even do some dried mint or some dried basil because that will still give you that same mediterranean flair without the extra effort once i have everything in the bowl i'm just going
to take that dressing give it one last shake and then we're going to drizzle this right over the top and gently begin to mix it all together you just want to have all of these veggies and the beans to have a nice light coating of that bright light lemon vinaigrette this salad is so bright and so fresh i just love how all of the flavors and the textures come together this is the perfect summer side salad it's also great for lunch you could chop up some hard-boiled eggs add some tuna or some canned salmon for
a really easy lunch idea and as always i'm super excited to see how you create this in your own kitchen so do me a favor if you enjoy recipes like this take a moment to like the video subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new recipe and if you know anybody else who wants to make healthy eating easy please share this with them as well thanks so much for watching i'm danny spees and i'll see you back here next time with some more clean and deliciousness cheers garbanzo beans
feta cheese boom or even a picnic one more time here we go so we're going to start boom so i'm going to start by making the salad dressing so i'm going to start by making the salad dressing for this recipe which is you
