🥔 SIDE
Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad)
Tomatoes and unpeeled cucumbers diced as small as you can with onion, pepper and parsley, dressed only with lemon juice, olive oil and salt.
Israeli · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 0 min
~130 cal · 4g protein · 17g carbs · 7g fat · 3g fiber · 8g sugars · 1g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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In Israel this salad is simply salat katzutz, chopped salad, or salat aravi, Arab salad; the name "Israeli salad" is mostly used abroad. It is the finely diced tomato and cucumber salad eaten across the eastern Mediterranean, and its roots are in the region's Arab and Ottoman kitchens. Jewish immigrants who arrived from the 1880s adopted it, and it became a fixture of the communal dining halls of the kibbutzim.
On the kibbutz it was breakfast food, eaten after hours of work in the fields alongside eggs, white cheese, yogurt and bread, and each member chopped and dressed their own at the table. Doing it well became a point of pride: the smaller and more even the dice, the better the cook. Kibbutz Beit Alfa even bred the small, thin-skinned cucumber that became the standard one for it.
It is now on the table at almost every Israeli meal, heaped beside eggs at breakfast, stuffed into pita with falafel or sabich, and served next to grilled meat. The cucumbers keep their skins, there is no lettuce, and the dressing is nothing more than lemon juice, olive oil and salt.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and gluten-, dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
- 4 medium firm ripe tomatoes
- 3 small cucumbers (Persian or Beit Alfa type), unpeeled
- 1/2 small red onion
- 1/2 green or red bell pepper
- 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 tsp salt
- a pinch black pepper
Instructions
- 1Cut the tomatoes into small, even dice of about 5 mm, keeping as much of their juice as you can on the board.
- 2Dice the unpeeled cucumbers to the same size, then dice the pepper and the onion even smaller, since they are sharper.✎ Chef’s noteThe fine, even dice is the point of the dish. Take your time with a sharp knife rather than a food processor, which bruises the vegetables.
- 3Put everything in a bowl with the parsley.
- 4Just before serving, dress with the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and toss well. Taste and add more lemon or salt, and serve at breakfast with eggs and cheese, in pita with falafel, or beside grilled meat.
Israeli (kibbutz and home) tradition, from the regional Arab chopped salad.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Tel Aviv. Shakshuka is North African, from the Maghreb, and it came to Israel with Libyan and Tunisian Jewish families in the 1950s and 1960s before becoming widely popular only from the 1990s. Hummus and falafel carry the same argument, so what a city can honestly claim is how it eats them, not who first made them.
🗺️
Israel. What is distinctive is the range of kitchens in one small place. Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, Persian, Ethiopian, Polish and Russian cooking arrived within a few decades of each other and are still identifiable, which is why a market stall may sell jachnun, malawach, kubbeh soup and gefilte fish within a few metres. The chopped salad of tomato and cucumber, dressed only with lemon and oil, is the common denominator.
🌍
Asia. Fermentation is the thread that runs the whole way across: soy sauce and miso, Korean doenjang and kimchi, Southeast Asian fish sauces, the soured batter behind an idli. Chilli is the newcomer among them, arriving only after 1500 with Portuguese and Spanish traders, which makes the heat in Sichuan, Thai and Korean cooking far younger than the fermenting underneath it.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Israel
SabichPita stuffed with fried eggplant, hard-boiled egg, hummus, salad, and a drizzle of tangy amba and tahini.
Jerusalem Mixed GrillMeorav Yerushalmi: chicken and offal seared fast with onion, cumin, and turmeric, stuffed into laffa.
MalawachA flaky, buttery Yemenite-Israeli pan-fried flatbread served with grated tomato and zhug.
Browse all Israel recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Best assembled just before serving. Prep the components ahead and dress at the last moment so it stays crisp.
Make it an Israel meal
LimonanaDrink
RugelachDessert
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Frequently asked questions
What is Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad)?
Tomatoes and unpeeled cucumbers diced as small as you can with onion, pepper and parsley, dressed only with lemon juice, olive oil and salt.
Where does Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) come from?
Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) is an Israeli dish from Tel Aviv, Israel.
Can Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions. Treat the substitutions as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we still count coconut as a tree nut to be cautious, although the FDA stopped listing it as one in 2025), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Salat Katzutz (Israeli Chopped Salad) take to make?
About 20 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 0 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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