The perfect condiment for grilled meats or mezze, this Turkish sumac onion salad has thinly sliced red onions tossed with bright sumac, fresh parsley and bright lemon juice.
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🍋 About Turkish Onion Salad
Popular in Turkish and other Mediterranean cuisines, sumac onions is the perfect condiment to add to grilled chicken skewers or whole grilled fish, for bright and crunchy addition.
The contrast in flavors and textures with the tart sumac and savory onions is out of this world. And it's a breeze to make!
Thinly slice red onion combines with fresh chopped parsley, a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice, olive oil, tangy sumac and salt. Toss everything together and let the sumac onions marinate while you prepare the rest of your meal.
The next time you're grilling kofta kebabs, or really any Mediterranean mezze, I'd like to strongly suggest (uhh, urge), to mix up this sumac onion salad.
📋 Ingredients
- Red Onion: Thinly slice the red onion as thin as you can. I also like to use a mandolin to get paper thin slices.
- Parsley: Give the leaves of fresh flat leaf parsley a rough chop. You can use curly parsley as well, but I that because it's heartier, curly leaf parsley needs a finer chop.
- Olive Oil: This is a simple salad, so use a flavorful and good quality olive oil flavorful the flavors stand out.
- Sumac: The star of this sumac onion salad is a spice called sumac, which has a distinctive tart flavor. More about sumac below.
- Lemon Juice: Use fresh lemon juice for this simple onion salad and if you feel inclined, add a scrape of fresh lemon zest as well.
- Kosher Salt: All you need is a good sprinkle of Kosher salt to bring all the flavors together.
See recipe card for full information on ingredients and quantities.
♦️ More About Sumac Spice
The star of this quick Turkish onion salad is a deep red spice called sumac. Sumac comes from the flowering sumac plant and is dried and ground up and is one of the main ingredients in za'atar blend.
You can often find sumac in international or Mediterranean stores as well as the Sumac here on Amazon.
Sumac is one of my favorite spices and I use it in a number of ways, including adding a sprinkle on top of vegetable puff pastry tarts, loaded hummus with feta and on watermelon feta salad for a pop of brightness.
🌶️ Substitutions and Variations
- Add fresh mint or cilantro along with the parsley.
- For added spice, add ½ teaspoon of Aleppo pepper.
- If red onions aren't available, substitute with yellow onions.
⏲️ Instructions
Making this simple Turkish onion salad couldn't be simpler!
- Thinly slice the red onion and add to a bowl.
- Add the sumac, salt, lemon juice, chopped parsley and drizzle of olive oil.
- Give the onion salad a good mix and let is marinate for 5 minutes so all the flavors some together. Then serve and enjoy!
📍 Recipe Tips
- Use a mandolin for super thin onion slices.
- If the onion is too strong, soak the onion slices in cold water for 10 minutes to remove some of the sharpness.
- Sumac onion salad will last covered in the refrigerator for 2 days.
Serving Suggestions
Serve the red onion salad over sfeeha (Lebanese meat pies) and garnish some over ground lamb kebabs with a good drizzle of tahini sauce and perhaps homemade pita bread.
Recipe FAQs
Add sliced onions to a bowl of cold water and soak for 10 minutes. Then drain and add to your recipe. The water will help remove some of the sharp bitterness from fresh onions.
For a fresh sand crisp onion salad, it will last a good 2 days. As the onions marinate with the salt and lemon, the slices will begin to soften but still taste great!
More Mediterranean Recipes to Try
Love this recipe? Please leave a 5-star 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟rating in the recipe card below & a review in the comments section further down the page.
Turkish Sumac Onions
LittleFerraroKitchen.com
Ingredients
- 1 medium sized red onion sliced thin
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon sumac
- Juice of 1 lemon
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 small bunch fresh parsley leaves roughly chopped
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a bowl and toss to combine.
- Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed (more salt or more sumac, for example).
- Let marinated while you prepare the rest of your meal.
Notes
- Sumac onion salad will last covered in the refrigerator for 2 days.
- Other substitutions you can do is add fresh mint or cilantro and a za'atar in addition to sumac.
- Use a mandolin for super thin onion slices.
- If the onion is too strong, soak the onion slices in cold water for 10 minutes to remove some of the sharpness.
FamilyCook says
We are a family of 4, 2 that love raw onions and 2 that wouldn't eat a raw onion. We are now a family of Raw onion eaters. The Sumac is great, linda lemony and this is now a topping for our a few time a month Taco bar. Fish tacos, Steak and ground beef or chicken tacos. This Onion Salad goes on all of them.
ItsMecookinforU says
I am beginning to see Sumac spice in Mainstream stores a bit now so it was time to try this recipe. So many people dont do raw onion, let me say that if you try this you may change your mind. We are going to try and keep this in our refrigerator at all times. It is a great stand alone dish and if you want toss it together and use it as a topping for any protein. Turkish Sumac Onions goes on our Falafel wrap and Dammm it's good. Chef Samantha makes a Zhoug Sauce, (spicy cilantro). Thats next on my list.
Sky says
We followed the recipe Exactly like it says and yesterday at the family BBQ I put the bowl of Turkish Onions on the buffet table. A few people put them on their hot dogs and one person put them on their Burger. Then a few people got up and put the Turkish Onions on their burgers and hot dogs. The entire bowl was gone, luckily almost everybody got to taste the flavor of the sumac spice mixed into this wonderful recipe. I'll double the recipe next time. I ordered the Sumac on Amazon but my neighbor said they have it at the mediterranean market.