Ingredient

Bulgur

Bulgur is wheat that has been parboiled, dried and cracked. Because it is already cooked, the fine grades need nothing more than soaking in cold water — which makes it one of the fastest grains there is, and the reason tabbouleh needs no pan at all.

The grades, and why they matter more than with any other grain

Using the wrong grade is the single reason a bulgur dish fails.

Fine (#1)

Soaks in cold water in twenty to thirty minutes, no heat at all. For tabbouleh, kısır, and kibbeh. This is what a Levantine salad recipe means.

Medium (#2)

Soaks in hot water, or simmers briefly. A general-purpose grade.

Coarse (#3) and extra coarse (#4)

Cooked like rice, simmered in liquid. For pilafs and stuffings, where you want distinct chewy grains.

Cracked wheat

Not the same thing. Cracked wheat is raw wheat broken up; bulgur has been parboiled first. Cracked wheat needs proper cooking and takes far longer.

Freekeh

Also not the same. Green wheat, roasted, with a smoky flavour. A relative rather than a substitute.

Soaking fine bulgur

The method for tabbouleh and its relatives.

1. Put the fine bulgur in a bowl and rinse it briefly if you like, though it is not essential.
2. Add cold water or, better, the juice from the tomatoes you are about to use, plus lemon juice — roughly the same volume as the bulgur.
3. Leave it for twenty to thirty minutes. It absorbs the liquid, swells and softens with no heat at all.
4. Squeeze out any excess and fluff it. If it is at all wet, drain it properly — a wet tabbouleh is a sad thing.
5. Dress it while it is still absorbing, so the oil, lemon and salt go into the grain rather than sitting on it.

Tabbouleh is a herb salad

This is worth saying because the version most people outside the Levant have eaten gets the proportions backwards.

Real tabbouleh is overwhelmingly parsley — great handfuls of it, finely chopped — with mint, tomato, spring onion, lemon, olive oil and a comparatively small amount of fine bulgur running through it. The bulgur is a texture and a body, not the base.

The Western version, which is mostly bulgur with some herbs stirred in, is a grain salad. It can be perfectly nice and it is a different dish. If a tabbouleh looks green rather than beige, it is closer to the original.

The corollary is practical: chop the parsley by hand and chop it fine, and dry it thoroughly first. Wet parsley waters the salad, and a food processor bruises it into a paste.

What else to do with it

• Kısır — the Turkish relative of tabbouleh, with pepper paste, tomato paste and pomegranate molasses. Redder, richer and more assertive.
• Kibbeh — fine bulgur worked with minced lamb and spices, either raw, fried in shells, or baked in a tray.
• Pilaf, with coarse bulgur cooked in stock with onion and butter. A staple across Turkey and the Levant, and a very good alternative to rice.
• In soup, particularly lentil soups, where it thickens and adds body.
• In a stuffing for vegetables — peppers, aubergines, vine leaves.
• In a burger or a köfte, where it binds and lightens.
• As a breakfast porridge, cooked in milk, which is an underrated use.
• Mixed into bread dough for texture.

Common questions