Tabouleh or Tabouli Salad With Tahini Sauce• Two Purple Figs (2024)

March 26, 2019 by Mahy, Updated August 16, 2022 5 Comments

This Tabouleh or Tabouli with Lemon Tahini Dressing is the best tabouleh recipe you can imagine – all made in a food processor. The quinoa makes this salad gluten-free while adding a bunch of nutritional value and texture!

If you’ve ever dreaded chopping tabouleh or ever wondered how to get started with homemade tabouleh or making tabouleh gluten free —you can’t miss this tabouleh salad!

TABOULEH/TABOULI

Tabouleh or Tabouli is basically a chopped parsley salad. So think of a Caesar salad and replace lettuce with parsley sort of thing.

So many things are added to flavor the parsley, but there’s never a right or wrong with tabouli. The most common ingredients you’ll find are: fresh mint leaves, chopped tomatoes, scallions and bulgur.

Since tabouli or tabouleh salad relies mainly on the fresh minced parsley, you can imagine the time it could take! However, I’ve found a fabulous trick to this!

HOW TO MAKE TABOULEH/TABOULI

This speedy tabouli salad is made in a food processor. Yes. So no more chopping for hours when making homemade tabouli.

At first, I pulsed everything together and it did an okay job. Some pieces were too fine others weren’t, as I processed even more, those fine pieces went watery and lost much of their freshness.

It was near the end of the day and I couldn’t afford to give up. So I stuck to that food processor and 4 batches later it just happened. A perfect tabouleh in 10 minutes rather than 10 hours!

Start by processing the scallions and mint, then remove them from the food processor and transfer them into a large bowl.

Now, you need to make sure parsley leaves are processed in several smaller batches to ensure they all have pretty much the same size and texture. Just dump each batch of ready to go parsley into a large bowl so you don’t avoid crowding your food processor.

When it comes to the tomatoes, well they are easily done by hand or quartered and pulsed in the food processor. Make sure to discard any tomato water after processing – it will make your tabouli salad soggy.

Toss the parsley, tomatoes and mint scallion mixture, then add in the quinoa, salt, lemon juice and olive oil.

LEMON TAHINI DRESSING

Usually, a classic tabouleh is seasoned with only lemon juice and olive oil. That’s what I do here too, but I love to keep this perfect tahini sauce on the side and drizzle it on top of my tabouli salad.

It’s a tangy lemon tahini dressing made with a video too and all you need to know about tahini! Make sure you read the post!

I can’t stress this enough, make sure you give your tabouli salad a drizzle of tahini sauce!

I tend to keep the sauce aside and find that almost everyone who tries it over their tabouleh can’t get enough 🙂 So I’m declaring thePerfect Tahini Sauce as the official tabouleh sauce.

QUINOA TABOULI

Let’s talk about quinoa for a second! The addition of quinoa makes this salad gluten-free while adding a bunch of benefits!

Aside from how healthy and loaded with protein quinoa is,(you can read more about quinoa and quinoa preparation in this how to cook quinoa post) it also adds such a unique texture to your tabouli.

Crunchy and nutty yet also chewy. I’ve tried millet, bulgur, farro and buckwheat. By far quinoa is my favorite!

TABOULEH TIPS

• Do not crowd your food processor when chopping the herbs. Make sure to do the chopping in batches so you don’t end up with watery tabouli salad.
• I encourage you to make the perfect tahini sauce with your tabouleh and keep it on the side so that everyone can help themselves.
• For meal prep, store all the chopped ingredients and cooked quinoa, as well as the sauce, separately and assemble last minute.
• Tabouli can be stored in the fridge and enjoyed for 2 days.

QUINOA RECPES

• Quinoa Stuffing with Corn Cranberries Pecans and Dill
• One Pot Quinoa Sweet Potato Salad
• Balsamic Kale Quinoa Chickpea Protein Bowl
• Quinoa Sweet Potato Lentil Soup