Grilled halloumi salad with cherry tomatoes and chickpeas
with Savoura
- Preparation 35 min
- Cooking 15 min
- Servings 4 to 6
- Freezing I do not suggest
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🥗 One of my favorite salads, and I mean that
I’ll say it straight: this grilled halloumi salad is one of my favorite salads, for real. Easy to put together, and everyone at the table asks for more. What makes it work is the tomatoes. Juicy « Cerizo » cherry tomatoes from Savoura (thanks to the collab @savoura and @alimentsduquebec!), chickpeas browned hard in a pan, halloumi off the grill, and a lemon dressing that isn’t shy. Acid, salt, freshness, crunch. All four show up.
🔥 Browned chickpeas and grilled halloumi: the whole trick
Here’s what separates this one from every other chickpea salad you’ve had. The chickpeas go into a hot pan for 7 to 8 minutes, never straight from the can into the bowl. The Maillard reaction caramelizes the outside and gives them a nutty edge. Then the halloumi goes on the BBQ on a reusable grilling sheet, 5 to 6 minutes a side, until it’s got the marks and a crisp shell with a soft middle. Add the cherry tomatoes, red onion, and a genuinely absurd amount of parsley and mint, and every forkful hits differently.
🍖 Serve it beside anything off the grill
This is the side dish for a summer supper. Steak, skewers, chicken, chops, whatever’s on the grate. Fair warning though: put this next to your main course and people will talk about the salad instead. Happens every time. It also makes a solid lunch the next day, as long as you eat it inside 24 hours so the halloumi is still worth eating.
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🧆 Brown the chickpeas. Don’t just drain them.
This is the part people skip, and it’s the part that matters. A chickpea straight out of the can is soft and tastes like the can. Give it 7 to 8 minutes in a screaming hot pan and it turns golden, faintly nutty, with a shell that holds up in the dressing. Two things make it work: dry them properly on paper towel first, or they’ll spit and pop at you, and spread them on a sheet pan to cool for 10 minutes before they go anywhere near the tomatoes. Hot chickpeas steam in the bowl and go soft again, which defeats the whole point.
🔥 Halloumi on the grill without losing half of it
Halloumi sticks, and slices fall through the grate. A reusable BBQ grilling sheet solves both. Preheat the grill to max, lay the sheet down, then the halloumi. 5 to 6 minutes a side gets you the dark marks and a crisp exterior with a soft, squeaky centre. Then let it sit 5 minutes before you cut it, otherwise it crumbles under the knife. If you want a version where the cheese is the whole show instead of a component, my grilled halloumi skewers do exactly that.
🧀 Buying halloumi that’s actually good
Not all of it is worth the price. Look for a young halloumi, under three months, firm but with a little give, not hard as a puck. Read the label: milk, rennet, salt, sometimes mint. If there’s a paragraph of other stuff on there, put it back. The herbed version is what I use in this salad because it lines up with the mint and parsley in the bowl.
🌿 A full cup of herbs, and no, that’s not a typo
½ cup parsley plus ½ cup mint. Most recipes call for two tablespoons and you can’t taste them. Chop them fine right before you assemble, not an hour ahead, so they keep their colour and their oils. Parsley brings the green, mint brings the lift. Together they’re what makes people ask what’s in it.
🍋 Zest AND juice, from two lemons
The juice brings acid. The zest brings the actual smell of lemon, which is where most dressings fall flat. Two lemons, both zested and squeezed, into ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil with garlic, dried oregano and dried parsley. Whisk it hard so it holds together, and dress the salad at the very last second so the halloumi doesn’t go soggy. If you’d rather have a jar of something in the fridge year-round, my homemade Greek dressing works here too.
🍖 What to serve with this halloumi salad
It’s built to sit next to the grill. Marinated BBQ chicken, steak, lamb chops, bang bang chicken skewers, salmon on a plank. For a full vegetarian spread, put it beside grilled corn salad and warm pita. To turn it into a meal on its own, stir in 1 cup of cooked and cooled couscous, orzo or quinoa, or a couple of handfuls of arugula. Leftovers keep 24 hours in the fridge and no longer. Past that the tomatoes water everything down and the halloumi goes rubbery, which nobody wants.
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Salad
- 4 packs (150 g / 5.3 oz each) Savoura « Cerizo » cherry tomatoes, halved
- ½ small red onion, finely chopped
- ½ cup (125 ml) fresh parsley, finely chopped
- ½ cup (125 ml) fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
- 2 cans (540 ml / 19 oz each) chickpeas, rinsed and drained
- Olive oil
- 2 packs (160 g / 5.6 oz each) halloumi cheese with fine herbs
- Reusable BBQ grilling sheet
Lemon dressing
- ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil
- Zest and juice of 2 lemons
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) dried parsley
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) dried oregano
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Preparation
- Put the cherry tomatoes, red onion, parsley and mint in a large salad bowl.
- Set a large frying pan over high heat, add a good drizzle of olive oil, then the drained chickpeas. Season with salt and pepper. Cook 7 to 8 minutes, until they’re deeply golden, adding a little more oil if the pan goes dry. Spread them on a baking sheet, let them cool 10 minutes, then add them to the bowl.
- Preheat the BBQ to maximum and lay the reusable grilling sheet on the grate. Grill the halloumi 5 to 6 minutes per side, until well marked. Let it rest 5 minutes, then cut it into large pieces and add it to the salad.
- Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a bowl with salt and pepper. Pour over the salad and toss right before serving.
Halloumi comes from Cyprus and is traditionally made with sheep’s and goat’s milk, though most of what you find in a Quebec grocery store now blends in cow’s milk. Milk, rennet, salt, and often a mint leaf tucked in the brine. That’s the whole list on a good one. What makes it different from every other cheese in the case is that it’s heated during production, which raises its melting point. That’s why it holds its shape on a grill instead of running through the grate.
Three things. Preheat the grill to maximum so the surface sears on contact instead of gluing itself down. Use a reusable BBQ grilling sheet so nothing falls through and nothing welds to the bars. And cut your slices thick, around 1 cm (½ inch), so they survive being flipped. 5 to 6 minutes per side is the window. Any longer and it dries out and turns squeaky-tough instead of squeaky-good. No oil needed on the cheese itself, it has plenty of its own fat.
Halloumi is salty, so build the rest of the bowl around acid and freshness. What works: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, chickpeas, watermelon, peaches, and a lot of fresh herbs (mint and parsley above all). A lemon or red wine vinegar dressing, never a creamy one. What doesn’t work is anything already salty next to it, so skip the olives and the feta when halloumi is in the bowl. If you want a grain in there, cooled couscous, orzo or barley all hold up. My grilled barley salad with kale and beets is the version I make when I want something heartier.
It’s a trade. On the plus side, it’s a real source of protein (about 22 g per 100 g) and calcium, and it’s rich in vitamin B12. On the other side, it’s salty (roughly 1 g of salt per 30 g) and fatty (about 24 g per 100 g, mostly saturated). My take: it’s an excellent protein to grill without adding a drop of fat, and a reasonable portion is 30 to 50 g, once or twice a week. In this salad the chickpeas carry a good share of the protein, so a little halloumi goes a long way.
Partly, yes, and it’s worth doing. Cut the tomatoes, brown the chickpeas, chop the herbs and shake the dressing in a jar, all of it up to a day ahead, kept separate in the fridge. Then assemble in two minutes right before you serve. What you should not do is grill the halloumi ahead and dress everything early. Cold halloumi goes firm and loses the soft centre, and dressed tomatoes bleed water into the bowl. If the cheese has been in the fridge, 30 seconds in a 350°F (175°C) oven brings it back. Once assembled, the salad is good for 24 hours and no more.
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