9 Dinner Recipes That Will Make Your Mouth Water and Your Mediterranean Diet Easy To Stick To

Living in rural France for going on 10 years has changed the way I cook. We don’t have everything available year-round. Instead, we live seasonally here, and if you took away the cheese and pastries, there are similarities to the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Everything is fresh and as it came out of the ground, which I love. We have superb seafood and some wonderful fruit and veg. Menus are much simpler, without sacrificing tastiness. The one the French might take issue with is the use of olive oil instead of butter, since everything is cooked in butter here. 

But if you’re serious about adopting a more Mediterranean diet, and I encourage you to do so, then it’s fish more often than red meat, plenty of beans and lentils doing serious work, and lots of fresh veggies and showing restraint with the bread and pasta.

9 Easy To Make Dishes For a Mediterranean Diet

I’m no food blogger, so I’ve turned to those who can help you make fabulous meals quickly, easily, and without any fuss. This is a collection of my favorite Mediterranean recipes that I hope will help me live a longer, healthier life.

1. Chicken Shawarma Bowls

Shawarma is essentially a Levantine street-food tradition of spiced meat cooked on a vertical spit, and the bowl version at home takes the same warm spice mix of cumin, coriander, paprika, turmeric, garlic, lemon, and marinates chicken thighs in it before roasting. 

Piled over rice or bulgur with cucumber, tomato, red onion, and a garlicky yogurt or tahini sauce, it hits every Mediterranean note in one dish.

2. Sheet-Pan Balsamic Salmon and Asparagus

Salmon two nights a week is one of the simplest ways to hit the omega-3 side of the Mediterranean diet, and this is the recipe to reach for when you’ve walked in the door at 6:45, and someone is asking what’s for dinner. 

It’s super simple and quick but oh so tasty. Balsamic- and garlic-glazed salmon fillets, with asparagus in the same pan, and 15 minutes later you’re eating.

The tips of the asparagus crisp, the stems stay tender, and the balsamic caramelizes into something between a sauce and a syrup. A squeeze of lemon at the end finishes it off. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

3. French Onion Chickpeas

This is the recipe that converted several bean-skeptics in my life, my husband included. We’re both fans of French Onion soup, and this gives it a chickpea twist. 

Deeply caramelized onions, thyme, a splash of wine, and soy or Worcestershire get built around chickpeas instead of a hunk of bread, and I always top mine with a blanket of melted Gruyère for the full effect. 

Chickpeas are a big part of a Mediterranean diet: fiber, plant protein, and a texture that stands up to bold flavors. They make this feel like proper cold-weather food even though there’s no meat in sight. A green salad on the side is all it needs.

Ali Slagle developed the recipe for NYT Cooking. Take the full 40 minutes on the onions. Rushing them is the only way to ruin this dish.

4. Pasta With Cherry Tomatoes and Bay Scallops

Bay scallops are small, sweet, and cook in about 90 seconds, which makes them one of the fastest sources of seafood protein you can put on a plate. Tossed through a garlicky tomato sauce with a bit of chili, fresh cherry tomatoes, and finished over spaghetti or linguine, they turn a pantry pasta into something you’d order in a coastal trattoria.

Olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, seafood, whole-wheat pasta, healthier than white pasta, and a shower of parsley at the end. 

5. One-Pot Chicken, Spinach and Sun-Dried Tomato Orzo

I can’t get orzo here in France, so I have to bring it back with me when I’ve visited the UK. I love it as it absorbs flavor like nothing else. Cooked in one pot with chicken thighs, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, and stock, it turns into a creamy-textured dinner without a spoonful of cream.

Sun-dried tomatoes are worth keeping in the pantry for exactly this kind of cooking. They bring the umami depth you’d otherwise get from meat, and they play beautifully with lemon, olives, and feta. Wilted spinach adds some greens and color.

6. Lemon-Garlic Sheet-Pan Salmon With Potatoes and Green Beans

This is one of my go-to recipes as it has three of my favorite things. I just realized that sounds like a line out of The Sound of Music. Anyway, those things are baby potatoes, which go in first because they take the longest; salmon and green beans join partway through, and everything gets a lemon-garlic-olive-oil dressing at the end.

The sort of dinner Mediterranean home cooks have been making for centuries. Tell me your mouth doesn’t water when I mention potatoes roasted until the edges crisp, beans still with a bit of snap, salmon just barely opaque in the middle.

7. Creamy Garlic Chicken and Broccoli Skillet

My daughter first introduced me to this recipe, and I think she found it originally on TikTok. To keep this healthy, I substitute cream for Greek yogurt, although the recipe I’m sharing uses almond milk and flour.  

Even my French friends love this as there’s lots of garlic and the sauce is thick enough to cling to the seared chicken thighs and roasted broccoli florets. 

Broccoli is one of the more underrated vegetables in Mediterranean cooking. Charred in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil and chili flakes, takes it to another level, no longer reminiscent of the soggy broccoli from my school dinners (I grew up in the UK)

8. Chickpea-Tuna Salad Lettuce Wraps

This is the dinner for the night nobody wants to cook, which has been many nights here during this hugely hot summer we’ve had. A tin of chickpeas, a tin of good tuna in olive oil, red onion, celery, capers, lemon, parsley, and a spoon of Greek yogurt combined and then piled into crisp lettuce leaves for wrapping. Total time: about 10 minutes.

Tinned fish is one of the great secret weapons of Mediterranean home cooking. Portuguese sardines, Spanish tuna in olive oil, or Sicilian anchovies can all be transformed into a yummy meal very quickly. 

9. Mediterranean Lentil Soup

This is the dish I turn to when the weather turns, and I want something warm and comforting that’s not going to take an age to make. Red or green lentils, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, cumin, and a good glug of olive oil simmer together with tinned tomatoes and stock until it’s thick enough to serve.

Lentils are another staple of a Mediterranean diet similar to chickpeas: cheap, filling, packed with fiber and plant protein, and they take on whatever spices you throw at them. A squeeze of lemon and a swirl of yogurt at the end lifts the whole pot, and it tastes even better the next day.

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