Salads and fresh plates
Greek salad
Horiatiki: tomato, cucumber, onion, pepper and olives under a whole slab of feta, dressed with oregano and oil.
Greek salad, horiatiki or village salad in Greek, is chunks of ripe tomato, cucumber, red onion, green pepper and Kalamata olives, topped with a thick slab of feta, sprinkled with dried oregano and dressed with olive oil. It has no lettuce. It is eaten all summer in Greece, at home and in every taverna.
What goes in
- Feta418%, One thick slab on top.
- Tomatoes732%, Ripe, in chunks.
- Cucumber418%, Thick slices.
- Red onion and green pepper314%, Thin rings.
- Kalamata olives29%, Whole.
- Olive oil and oregano29%, The only dressing.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Layer Cut the tomatoes and cucumber into large chunks. Step 2: Layer Slice the onion and pepper into rings and add the olives. Step 3: Rest Season the vegetables lightly with salt. Step 4: Layer Lay a slab of feta on top and sprinkle with dried oregano. Step 5: Serve Pour over plenty of olive oil and serve with bread. Finished Greek salad, by share.
A simple summer plate
Tomatoes, cucumbers and olives have long been everyday food in Greece, and feta has been made in the Greek mountains for centuries. The salad in its present form became a fixture of tavernas in the 1960s and 1970s, as tourism grew. It is served as a shared starter or side, and the juices left in the bowl are mopped up with bread.
Feta
Feta is a white, brined cheese made from sheep's milk, or sheep's with up to thirty per cent goat's milk. Since 2002 the name has been a protected designation of origin in the European Union, reserved for cheese made in specific regions of Greece. In the salad it is laid on top as a single slab rather than crumbled, and each diner breaks off pieces.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Feta: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source