When I was living in Portugal every Friday we had a BBQ and made a range of salads. This was one of my favourite discoveries. I had never even had red pickled onions before, never mind had to prepare them my self. I presumed pickling had to take days. But this took 20 minutes max! I was amazed.
This salad has so much flavour and everyone who came to our BBQs would always compliment it. The red pickled onions are so tasty and pair perfectly with the feta cheese and spinach. I also love how pink they go!
One of my favourite quotes after someone had this salad was ‘ this just shows salads don’t have to be boring’.
Pickled Red Onion Salad
Serves 3 – 4 people as a side
What you will need:
For the salad-
100g baby spinach
200g feta cheese
1 cucumber diced
250g cherry tomatoes, halved
For the red pickled onions-
1 red onion finely sliced
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup water
4 tbsp caster sugar
2 generous pinches of sea salt
Method
1. For the pickled red onions, place the finely sliced red onion, white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, water, sugar and sea salt into a large pan. Bring the pan up to a simmer and simmer for 5 minutes. Then turn off the heat and allow to cool in the pan. This will take about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile add the spinach, cherry tomatoes and cucumber to a salad bowl.
3. Once cool, drain the liquid from the pickled onions and add them to the salad. Toss the salad to mix all the ingredients together and then crumble the feta cheese over the top.
Serve and enjoy xxx
Amy’s top tip- sometimes I double the pickled onion recipe and keep half of it, along with the pickling liquid, in the fridge in a glass jar. I use them throughout the week to top other salads, or they are really good on tacos!
