bulgur salad with chickpeas and red peppers
One thing I have heard a lot of since I launched this site but six months ago is “I just don’t know how you find all that time to cook.” And while my typical response is that “Oh, well I don’t have a life so that makes it really easy,” and I’m only a little bit joking — my office is 13 blocks from my apartment, I rarely work past 6:30 p.m., I tend to wake up hours before my husband on the weekends, eager to fiddle with recipes that would otherwise be too time-consuming, and I don’t have the energy or the liver to go out many nights a week anymore — the truth is that aside from making some fresh pasta with about two pounds of wild mushrooms two Sundays ago, I haven’t cooked dinner for us in . And I hate it.
Estimated Nutrition (whole recipe, rough)
Counts 14 of 16 ingredients — the other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and contribute nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume — 14 portions →
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Chickpea | 1/2 cup canned (120g) drained | 134 |
| Olive Oil | 1 tbsp (14g) | 119 |
| Cherry | 1 cup (138g) | 87 |
| Pita Bread | 1 slice (30g) white | 79 |
| Honey | 1 tbsp (21g) | 64 |
| Onion | 1 medium (110g) | 44 |
| Tomato | 1 medium (123g) | 22 |
| Lemon | juice of 1 lemon (48ml) | 12 |
| Cumin | 1 tsp ground (2.1g) | 8 |
| Chili | 1 tsp (2.7g) | 8 |
| Pepper | 1 tsp ground (2.3g) | 6 |
| Lettuce | 1 cup shredded (36g) | 5 |
| Parsley | 1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g) | 1 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Bulgur | not in our table | 0 |
| Water | not in our table | 0 |
Totals for the whole recipe, adding one typical portion per ingredient — listed above. Quantities in the recipe are not counted, so this is a rough guide only — not suitable for medical or dietary planning.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups fine-grain bulgur
- 3 cups boiling water
- 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- Salt
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
- 6 ounces drained jarred roasted red peppers, diced (about 1 cup)
- 1/2 cup quartered yellow cherry tomatoes
- 1 small red onion, finely chopped (to reduce its bite, you can soak it and then squeeze it out with the bulgur for some or all of the absorption time)
- 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley leaves
- 1 medium head Bibb lettuce, leaves separated
- 4 pita breads, warmed and cut into wedges