Barley Tabouleh (Tabouli)

Well, this last Saturday it was nice and hot out and I wanted a filling and refreshing cold salad. Going through my mental rolodex of appropriate dishes I immediately settled on tabouleh. However, I wanted barley instead of cracked wheat. That is exactly what I ended up doing.

I took the recipe and made a few small changes from here. That whole website is absolutely great actually.

The barley and fresh vegetables are a great flavour combination and are really quite low calorie for how filling this dish is. The one thing I did notice is that the olive oil is a large chunk of the overall calories in the dish... So, I scaled the oil back a bit so as to not hurt the flavour or taste.

The recipe is quite simple but does require a headstart on cooking the barley. And I would also say that chopping parsley is time consuming to say the least. Next time I think I will try using the food processor, but I wasn't convinced the food processor would do a good job so I spent a solid ten to fifteen minutes chopping mint, parsley, chives, and garlic.

Please, do yourself a favor and try this dish. It is absolutely amazing and refreshing on a hot day.