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This Week's Pick: Ottolenghi's Chickpea Salad
Yotam Ottolenghi's Chickpea Salad With Cucumber and Roast Lemon Salsa (NYT Cooking) wins this week — 45 five-star ratings, 35 minutes, a cookout-ready make-ahead side. The highest engagement of any dinner or side dish published May 17–24.
One recipe, ranked by engagement and ease of prep. Memorial Day weekend made the choice easy.
The pick — and why it rose to the top
Of the new recipes published across NYT Cooking, Bon Appétit, and Serious Eats between May 17 and 24, Chickpea Salad With Cucumber and Roast Lemon Salsa by Yotam Ottolenghi for NYT Cooking holds the strongest combination of community engagement and practical timing. 1
The numbers by Sunday, May 24: 45 ratings averaging 5 stars — the highest engagement of any dinner or side dish published this week. Published May 18, it had nearly a full week in the window. Among this week's new recipes, only Lemon Possets by Toni Chapman (May 22) drew more ratings — 73 at 5 stars — but that's a dessert requiring a 4-hour chill. 2 For a recipe you bring to a cookout or put on a weekend table, the Ottolenghi salad wins on timing and meal-role versatility.
The recipe also came attached to an editorial essay: "These Summery Chickpeas Are Coming for Your Potato Salad." The headline is a good summary of what the dish does. 1
What you're actually making
The dish is a riff on the classic potato salad — cold, scoopable, rich — with chickpeas doing the structural work instead of potatoes. Ottolenghi describes the goal directly: "This salad delivers everything you want from a classic cookout side: the richness, the bulk, the familiar comfort of something cold and scoopable." 1
What separates it from a dressed chickpea bowl is the salsa spooned over the top: lemon slices roasted until they caramelise and collapse, then combined with cucumber, sweet dill pickles, jalapeño, and a touch of maple syrup. As Ottolenghi puts it: "What tips it somewhere new is the cucumber salsa spooned over the top: lemons, roasted until tender and just charred at the edges, intensify into something jammy and sour." 1
Total active time is 35 minutes, serving 6. It's designed to be made in advance and served cold — ideal for a Memorial Day spread where oven time is at a premium.
Ingredients — all standard grocery store items
The shopping list is short and seasonal, with one technique-forward step: roasting the lemon slices.
- Canned chickpeas (two 15-oz cans)
- English cucumber
- Lemons (roasted directly in a dry skillet or oven)
- Sweet dill pickles and their brine
- Jalapeño
- Maple syrup
- Olive oil, salt, fresh herbs
One reader confirmed the technique works: "Roasting the lemon slices made a terrific difference, as they caramelized and lent wonderful zest to the salad." 1 Nothing on this list requires a specialty store. If your jalapeños are mild, the recipe still works — the pickles carry the acidity.
What home cooks are reporting
The 45 reviewers are consistent: the roasted lemon is the move that earns the most comments. 1 The caramelised slices give the salsa a jammy, almost marmalade-like quality that pickled cucumber alone wouldn't produce. Several readers noted they'll bring this to outdoor gatherings because it holds up well and can be fully prepped the day before.
The chickpea swap over potatoes also changes the nutrition and texture equation. Chickpeas hold their shape where boiled potatoes might get waterlogged; they also stay firmer after a night in the fridge without turning starchy. For anyone prepping a Memorial Day side dish on Saturday to serve Sunday, this is a practical advantage.
→ Full recipe:
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Runner-up worth bookmarking
If you're cooking for a smaller group and want a dessert, Lemon Possets by Toni Chapman (NYT Cooking, May 22) is the other standout this week. 2 At 73 ratings averaging 5 stars — the week's highest engagement count across all recipe types — it earned that rank fast. Six ingredients, 30 minutes of active work, served in the lemon shells or in small cups, and ready to refrigerate up to two days ahead. Chapman's description is accurate: "this sweet, creamy, zesty dessert feels much fancier than it actually is." The texture is set by full-fat heavy cream reacting with citric acid — no gelatin, no baking.
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The Ottolenghi salad wins this week for home cooks feeding a crowd at a cookout. The Lemon Possets is the right call if you want a make-ahead dessert that requires almost no cooking equipment and arrives looking much more effortful than it was.
The rest of the field, quickly
Three other confirmed recipes from the week that cleared the engagement bar:
- Tofu Schnitzel With Buttermilk Slaw (Justine Doiron, NYT Cooking, May 19) — 34 ratings, 5 stars, 35 minutes. A flattened, panko-crusted tofu cutlet with a creamy dill slaw; the pickle brine marinade is what makes it. 3
- Smashed Pork Tacos (Bon Appétit, May 19) — 20 minutes, 8 tacos, all made under the broiler at once instead of in a skillet. Al pastor seasoning with pineapple, a practical shortcut that trades some char for speed. 4
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- Roasted Rhubarb (Melissa Clark, NYT Cooking, May 20) — 28 ratings at 4 stars, 25 minutes, 3 ingredients. A versatile component recipe for breakfast or dessert — spoon over yogurt, pound cake, or ice cream. 5
The week's highest Reddit engagement came from r/MealPrepSunday, where a birthday meal prep post featuring Za'atar salmon skewers and Lebanese chicken skewers reached 3,366 upvotes — the single largest engagement number across all platforms this week. 6 The recipe details weren't accessible in the gallery-format post, so it can't be the primary pick, but the signal is worth noting: Za'atar-marinated proteins with roasted vegetables hit the top of the feed this weekend.
Cover image: photo from Chickpea Salad With Cucumber and Roast Lemon Salsa — NYT Cooking
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