Avoiding lettuce? Can’t blame you. This This Mediterranean Farro Salad doesn’t have any. What it does have is has an everyday, vegetarian vibe with an elevated aura. It’s farro, feta, and freshness!

This Mediterranean Farro Salad is bright and earthy with creamy and salty accents. It has an excellent chew with satisfying elements of crunch and juiciness. Overall, it’s fresh and complex … plenty rich enough to be a full meal without being heavy.  

An Elevated Everyday Salad:

I’m not calling this “restaurant quality,” only because I’ve never been to a restaurant that serves a salad like this. I wish I knew of one! I can imagine getting something like this salad at a vegetarian deli, and if I did, and it tasted just exactly like what I’ve got here, I’d be pretty happy with it. I’m also not calling it “special occasion” food, because it seems too down-to-earth for that. But I will say that it makes a glorious presentation, and has been a certified-platinum hit when I’ve brought it to pot lucks. That leaves us straddling “elevated” and “every-day.” It’s much better than most salads that most people make at home. 

Ingredients:

• The optional elements mainly bring fat to the salad. They’ll affect how rich the salad tastes, and how filling it is. If you add all of them, the salad will be luxurious and substantial.
• As with nearly any salad, ingredient proportions are up to you.
• You could cut the farro down by quarter or even half, and all you’d change is how much this salad is “about” farro, and how many people you could feed.
• What are you going to do with 1/3 of a can of leftover chickpeas? Although 2/3 of the can does seem like the perfect amount for this salad, if you’re answer to that question is “I have no idea,” then you might as well toss in the whole can.

Prep:

• Start with two tablespoons of lemon juice in the dressing, and add some or all of the rest as an adjustment if you feel it needs to be punchier or more tart. If you accidentally get it too tart, you can always add more oil. 
• This salad looks fantastic before it’s been tossed. I suggest you toss each ingredient, as listed, on top of one another – not even carefully – and bring it to the table (or place it on a buffet) that way. Add dressing and toss, then add avocado and feta and toss again, at the table.
• You may not need all the dressing. It depends on your tastes. I like all the dressing.
• Ordinarily, I’d suggest that you do all your chopping while the farro is cooking and cooling. But if you want your farro on the bottom of the un-tossed bowl, you may want to wait on the chopping until the farro is already cooled. That’s what the 70-minute prep time assumes. If you’ll also be cooking dried chickpeas, add another two hours.

Serving Sizes:

If you’re having this for lunch or dinner, you can get six very generous portions. On a buffet with lots of other dishes, you could expect to get double that number, easily.

Leftovers:

Because all the ingredients are fairly hardy, the dressed salad holds up well leftover, refrigerated. It does taste better at room temperature, though. If you eat the salad straight from the fridge, you may find it needs a bit more salt.

If you add avocado to the salad, it will still turn out surprisingly well leftover. The color of the dressing will help to mask any oxidation that the avocado undergoes. If you’re concerned that it won’t, give the leftover salad a bit more of a mixy-mix before committing the leftovers to the fridge. The avocado has a tendency to easily break down and blend in with the dressing if you stir it a lot. 

Social Learning:

Three ways to guess, or maybe know, what kind of farro you have: assumption, the packaging, and the “water test.”

Most farro sold in the U.S. is pearled. I live in the U.S., so I generally assume that the farro I buy is pearled. “Pearled” means the grain has been mechanically polished to strip away its tough, fiber-rich outer bran layer and germ.

If you don’t want to assume, examining the packaging is almost as easy as assuming, but maybe not for the reason you’d think. Farro packages can be notoriously vague about labeling their contents as “pearled,” “semi-pearled,” or “whole,” even though the distinctions are consequential. However, you can get a major clue from the recommended cook time. If the recommended cooking time is 10-15 minutes, your farro is likely pearled. 20-30 minutes, likely semi-pearled. 35-40+ minutes (or mentions soaking), probably whole.

If you got your farro from a bulk bin, and so there are no cooking instructions, a good way to figure it out is to note what happens when you stir the ingredients in the first step of this recipe. Pearled farro will turn the water decidedly cloudy because it will have exposed surface starches.

Why is this important? Because the way you cook it will differ, depending on what type of farro you have. If your farro is pearled, soaking would be inappropriate, and a short cooking time is recommended. That makes the “pressure cook” function a good choice for pearled farro, if you’re using an Instant Pot.

The Backstory

I have to confess that I still do not fully understand my Instant Pot. I like it, and I use it a lot, but I’m still surprised that I don’t yet fully understand its functions. And even then, its manual doesn’t always provide as granular an explanation of its functions as I’d like. 

Anyway, the “Multigrain” function uses a temperature profile tailored to cooking grains. Within the Multigrain function, “Less, “Normal,” and “More” are primarily durations that you can adjust to your liking. The pot will remember your settings for next time, which seems convenient if you cook the same thing a lot. However – and this is critical – “more” contains an additonal function. It will add a 45-minute soak time to whatever time you program. So, tell the pot to cook for an hour, and it will soak for 45 minutes, and then cook for an hour. The manual does specify that. However, I belive that it is a heated, warm-water soak, and the manual doesn’t specify that. 

TLDR: don’t use the “Multigrain,” “More” function isf your farro is pearled. “Less” or “Normal” will work. But so will “Pressure Cook.” 

Mediterranean Farro Salad

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, Kesor. Thank you, ⌘+C. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #2 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs. As I said, can’t blame you if you’re avoiding lettuce these days. Along with blueberries, jalapenos, granola, salad dressing, and an ever-lengthening list. Welcome to America! 

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