Our Favorite Watermelon Salad

Our favorite Watermelon Salad with cucumber, red onion, parsley, mint, onion, pistachios, and crumbled feta cheese (optional). Inspired by Moroccan flavors,  this salad is refreshing and flavorful! 

One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.- Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This Watermelon Salad is the best! It is incredibly refreshing and flavorful and easy to make. It’s made with cold crisp watermelon and cucumber with thinly sliced red onion, parsley, mint, optional pistachios, and optional feta cheese, tossed in a light red wine vinaigrette.

WhY You’ll love this Watermelon salad!

The addition of cucumber, fresh parsley and fresh mint just brings it up a notch. Add feta cheese or keep it vegan. For extra crunch add pistachios, or feel free to leave them out. There is a hint of spice here- clove! Just a pinch… so good!

Watermelon Salad Ingredeints

• Watermelon- ripe, but not overly!
• Cucumber-thinned skinned are best like English, Turkish or Persian.
• Red Onion- for a little bite.
• Fresh herbs- flat leaf parsley and mint.
• Vinegar- red wine vinegar, champagne vinegar or white balsmic.
• Olive oil– extra virgin all the way.
• Optional additions- feta cheese ( sheep’s milk if possible) and toasted pistachio nuts.

How to make Watermelon Salad

1. Place watermelon, cucumber and onion in a large bowl.
2. Add herbs, optional feta and pistachios.
3. Gently mix.
4. Add olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and mix to incorporate.
5. Taste and adjust salt… you made need more if not adding feta.
6. Refrigerate until very cold, and enjoy.

Can watermelon Salad be made ahead?

Yes. Cut and prep the ingredients, placing the chopped herbs on top. Cover and store in the fridge for up to 8 hours. Right before serving, add the dressing ingredients and toss just to combine, add fet and pistachios if you like!

And though this Watermelon Salad is best served the day it is made, it does seem to keep pretty well for a couple of days, so be sure to save the leftovers.

More Recipes you'll Love!

Watermelon Gazpacho

Tomato Watermelon Salad

Watermelon Shiso Salad

Chilled Cucumber Melon Soup

On the homefront: How quickly summer is going! The temperatures are soaring here well into the 100s again.

Once, when I was young, on a sweltering summer night in Los Angeles, my frugal dad sliced open an enormous watermelon right down the middle and handed me half, along with a spoon and declared it dinner. My mother was in Finland visiting “her people” for what seemed like an eternity, and things got a bit lax.

So there we sat outside on the patio, under a canopy of grapevines, each with our giant half watermelon eating it right out of the rind, melting from the heat and missing my mom.  The sun eventually sunk into the hills, and our bellies were full. The cold, crisp watermelon felt like an oasis in the desert-  so soothing. To this day,  I can not look at a watermelon without remembering that night.

xoxo

Sylvia

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