Olivier Salad doesn’t have the typical Persian flavours and that’s because it originally comes from Russia. It made its way into the Iranian kitchens a long time ago and I can honestly say, I never went to an Iranian party where they didn’t serve Salad Olvieh. It has become one of the most popular Persian party foods!
There are a few tricks you need to keep in mind to make the PERFECT Olvieh and you will learn them in this post.
This recipe is meant for 10 people as an appetiser for a party, alongside other snacks. If you’re making it for your household, you may want to adjust the amount of ingredients. Because a good Salad Olvieh is quite a bit of work, I still prepare this amount to make it worthwhile. We keep it in the fridge and eat it over the course of a couple of days.
Feel free to adjust the amount of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and other ingredients to match your own personal taste.
You can download this recipe as a printable PDF for a small fee here.
Cook the most popular Persian dishes at home with the help of my e-book.
Method
Boil the potatoes
Boil the potatoes until they are cooked. The cooking time depends on the size of your potatoes. It may take anything from 20 to 60 minutes. In the meantime, you can cook the chicken breast (see below).
Poke them with a fork to see if they are cooked. Once they are soft in the centre, drain them in a colander and let them steam dry. This will allow as much moisture as possible to evaporate, which will make for a more delicious Salad Olivier. In the meantime, you can prep the other ingredients.
Cook the chicken breast
Skin off and quarter the onion. Add 1 tbsp olive oil to a pan and put it over medium heat. Add the onion and chicken breasts and gently fry them for a few minutes.
Cover the onion and chicken breasts with boiling water, and season with black pepper and salt. Let them simmer over low to medium heat for about 40 minutes.
Boil the eggs
Hard boil the eggs (8 to 12 minutes depending on size).Shock them with cold water and peel them. Grate them roughly into a large bowl.
Prepare the salty gherkins (khiaar shoor)
Chop the khiaar shoor into small pieces. You then need to squeeze the water out of the gherkins (an essential step that is often skipped). If all that gherkin juice remains in the gherkins, it will eventually come out and leak into your Salad Olvieh, making it watery and not nice to look at! You can squeeze the chopped khiaar shoor with your hands or put them in a muslin cloth and then squeeze the juice out of them.
Mash or grate the potatoes and pull the chicken breast
Once the chicken breasts are cooked, remove them from the pot so that they can cool down. You can remove the onions and use the stock to make soup. If you don’t have any use for it now, you can freeze it in a plastic container for later.
Once the potatoes are cooled down, peel them and then either grate or mash them. This is one of the few points my Maman and I disagree on. I like a very smooth Salad Olvieh, so I prefer to mash the potatoes. My Maman says they should be grated so that it has a bit more texture.
Pull the chicken breasts apart like pulled pork once they are cooled down. You can shred the chicken the old-fashioned way with two forks (you’ll need forks or protective gloves to shred hot chicken by hand), or my other favourite method: shred the chicken with your fingers. As soon as the chicken is cool enough to handle safely, gently pull it apart with your fingers.
Add them to the bowl.
Combine all the ingredients and season to taste
Combine everything well and then add the mayonnaise, lemon juice, salty gherkins, frozen peas, and olive oil.
Season generously with black pepper and salt. Keep tasting and seasoning until you are happy with the result.
Decorate your Salad Olvieh
You can decorate your Salad Olvieh with olives, olive oil, carrot slices, dried tarragon and more salty gherkins. Please don’t arrange them in the shape of flowers or fish! They never really look like flowers or fish. JK, do what you like! XD
Serve it with any bread you like. Enjoy!
