Macedonian Pepper Salad

This colorful and nutritious grilled pepper salad is a delicious combination of fresh tomatoes, grilled peppers, onion strips, and fresh parsley. It’s a great seasonal salad and perfect to make ahead of time.

Grilled Pepper and Tomato Salad

Salads are a great addition to almost any meal. They go perfect with barbeques, casserole dishes, seafood, various chicken and salmon recipes. Or they make a great quick light lunch or dinner! This roasted pepper salad is a traditional Macedonian salad, seasonally served in many restaurants across the country. It’s easy to make, requires only a few simple ingredients and it’s great for everyone looking for a nutritious make-ahead salad recipe.

Ingredients you’ll need:

• Peppers – for the traditional version of this salad are used green anaheim peppers. They are long and more thin in comparison to the bell peppers. Bell peppers can be used as a substitute, and those should be preferably green as well. If you can find anaheim peppers I would highly encourage you to try them – they go perfect with salads and can be used raw or as a topping on other salads such as Greek.
• Roma tomatoes are always my go to as I think they have that mediterranean flavor, but any other tomatoes would work. Substitutes here are cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, herloom tomatoes;
• Onion – white or red onion cut on thin strips;
• Fresh parsley;

How to grill, peel, and store bell peppers!

There are many ways to make bell peppers like roasting, pan-frying, etc., but grilling is by far one of the easiest ways!

1. To start off preheat the grill on medium, then add the peppers one next to each other in one single layer.
2. Grill them on each side for around 4-5 minutes or until they get a nice light golden brown color.
3. The easiest way to peel bell peppers is to add them to a ziplock bag or aluminum foil right while they are still hot and cover them completely for 10-15 minutes. This way the steam would stay in the bag and the skin would come out in one try.

To peel the peppers with clean hands, full the skin from top to bottom, and if evenly grilled, the skin would come off easily. If you are not planning to use the peppers right away, transfer the peeled peppers to an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 5 days. Note: Let the peppers cool down the peppers completely before refrigerating.

Pepper salad dressing:

And a great thing about this salad is that you don’t have to mix the dressing in advance. Just drizzle olive oil, vinegar, and salt directly in the salad individually and enjoy!
If you want to make the dressing in advance in a small bowl mix olive oil, apple cider or balsamic vinegar, and salt. Mix it well together and spoon it over the salad before serving.

Serve it with:

This delicious and simple salad goes well with just about any main dish. It pairs very well with various grilled meats, grilled vegetables, like zucchini, eggplant. I love serving it for breakfast with potato frittata or on its own as a light meal. I also love serving it along with toasted bread or adding some of it right on top of the salad.

Quick tips:

• This peppers salad has 4 ingrediets and a simple 3 ingredient dressing. It doesn’t follow and strict rulles, so you can add olives, or feta cheese on top for more flavor!
• I highly recommend grilling instead of roasting because the peppers are way easier to peel and the chances to burn them are less likely. Plus the grilling process doesn’t require any oil.
• The grilled peppers and tomatoes are cut on biger chunks or cubes, and the onion is cut on thin strips. The parsley should be always fresh and not dried and it’s best if used choped instead of diced.

You’ll also love to try:

Mediterranean Chickpea Salad
Cucumber Tomato Salad
Bruschetta Recipe
3 Ingredient Socca Pancakes

Print Recipe

Macedonian Pepper Salad

Prep Time10 mins

Total Time10 mins

Course: Salads

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Servings: 4 servings

Ingredients

salad

• 10 green peppers – check notes for details
• 3 Roma tomatoes
• 1/2 white onion
• fresh parsley

dressing

• 8 tbsp – 40g olive oil
• 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp salt

Instructions

salad

• Clean the peppers from the stems. Preheat the grill to medium and add the peppers to the grill in one single layer.
• Grill for 4-5 minutes on each side or until the peppers get soft.
• Once they are grilled and still hot, add them in a ziplock bag or cover them in a bowl with aluminum foil, making sure that the steam stays inside. Leave them to rest for 10-15 minutes.
• Peel the peppers by pulling the skin from top to bottom.
• Leave them to cool completely and cut the peppers into 1-inch cubes.
• Cut the tomatoes in half and then cut each side into three wedges. Finally, cut the wedges into 2-3 bite-sized pieced.
• Cut the onion into thin strips.
• Mix everything together and sprinkle freshly chopped parsley on top.

dressing

• To make the dressing in a small bowl, mix olive oil, vinegar, and salt and drizzle over the salad before serving.

Notes

For this recipe I used Anaheim peppers, they are thinner and longer in comparison to bell peppers. Bell peppers can be used as a substitute but they need to be green!

I used Roma tomatoes for this salad as they have that Mediterranean flavor and are my personal favorite; as a substitute, it can be used cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, etc.

If for any reason you can’t grill peppers as a second option would be roasting them in the oven;

A crucial step to get the peppers to peel easily is to cover them with foil or add them in a ziplock bag; this way to steam would stay inside they would soften up and the skin would come out easy;