Tunisian-Inspired Chickpea Salad with Harissa Dressing

This savory Tunisian-inspired chickpea salad packs in the flavor with olives, tangy capers, roasted bell peppers, and hard-boiled eggs. A tomatoey harissa dressing, spiced to taste, brings the salad together for a delicious result. Serve this salad cold and pair it with some crusty bread and cheese, grilled meats, and/or a green salad. This is a great summer salad. We make it almost every year!

This Tunisian chickpea salad originally hails from Mediterranean Fresh by Joyce Goldstein, a wonderful cookbook with plenty of Mediterranean salad recipes. This version is adapted to save time. I make the harissa dressing a little simpler and use canned chickpeas. Below you’ll find my version of the salad that we have repeatedly enjoyed here at home.

Roasted bell peppers

You can either use store-bought, oil-packed bell peppers or you can roast your own. Both ways work well for this recipe, but keep in mind that the flavor is not identical. Store bought roasted peppers tend to have a more acidic, less sweet flavor. With the acidity of the salad dressing, that works here. If you want to make your own roasted bell peppers, you can find an easy way to roast peppers here. As always with roasting, it does take time, but they freeze well if you make a bunch!

Harissa

Harissa is a popular spicy condiment in North Africa that is starting to become popular globally. The main ingredient is hot chili peppers, combined with spices such as garlic, caraway, cumin, and coriander. For this dressing, the base is tomato paste for a concentrated flavor. Smoked paprika and Cayenne pepper bring the hot chili pepper notes, plus plenty of harissa-style spices. Since it’s used as a salad dressing here, we also use lemon juice and olive oil to thin out the dressing.

Make ahead

Served cold or room-temperature, this Tunisian chickpea salad is very easy to make up to one day ahead.

Print Recipe

Tunisian-inspired chickpea salad with harissa dressing

A flavorful and easy summer salad

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Total Time20 minutes mins

Course: Salad

Cuisine: North African

Keyword: chickpea salad

Servings: 4

Ingredients

Harissa dressing:

• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 3 cloves garlic minced (2 tsp)
• 1 tbsp paprika
• ½ tbsp smoked paprika
• ⅛ tsp cayenne pepper or to taste
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp caraway seed
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp dried chopped onions
• ⅛ tsp sugar
• 1 ½ tsp lemon juice
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Salad ingredients:

• 265 g canned chickpeas drained & rinsed (from 400 g can)
• 3 tbsp capers rinsed
• 2 large bell peppers roasted, peeled, and seeded
• 1/3 cup halved cured black or green olives (not canned, about 10 olives)
• 4 hard-boiled eggs
• 2 tbsp chopped cilantro leaves plus some for garnish

Instructions

• Prepare the harissa dressing. In a large bowl, mix together all the dressing ingredients.
• Mix salad ingredients. Rinse the chickpeas and capers. Chop the roasted peppers into bite-size pieces. Halve the olives. Peel and chop the eggs into bite-size pieces (you may reserve some eggs quarters for garnish if desired). Finely chop the cilantro leaves. Add all the salad ingredients to the bowl with the dressing, and stir to coat.
• Serve cold or room temperature, garnished with some cilantro leaves and any reserved egg quarters.

Notes

The preparation time given assumes the eggs are already hard boiled and the peppers are already roasted.