Real Food, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, IBD-AID (Phase III), Paleo, Whole30
This Thai Beef Salad recipe is cross posted from Spring Forest Farm.
Thai Beef Salad is a perfect summer salad, packed full of fresh herbs and crisp greens. While many cuts of beef require slow-cooking, this recipe uses a skirt steak, which cooks quickly. This might be your new favorite week-night meal!
THE SALAD
If you look online and compare recipes for Thai Beef Salad, you’ll find a wide array of salad ingredients. The common denominators seem to be cucumber, basil, mint, and cilantro. You’ll find recipes that use red onions or scallions or green onions. Some recipes call for grape tomatoes, some don’t. Some use salad greens. Others rely on thinly sliced cucumber as the base of the salad. When I created this recipe, I decided to use the ingredients I felt my family would enjoy most. I encourage you to personalize your choices as well.
THE MARINADE
Creating a salad base is pretty simple. The more complex piece of this recipe is the marinade. I have found that pasture raised and finished steaks are well served by a flavorful marinade. In general, a marinade should contain salt, fat, acid, and a pop of flavor. For this particular marinade, I use a soy-sauce-substitute for the salt, olive oil for the fat, and lime juice for the acid. The flavoring is then a mixture of fresh ginger, honey, garlic, and fish sauce. I love this marinade because it’s as simple as throwing all of the ingredients into a blender and blending. I marinate the steak(s) for about two hours.
PREPARING THE STEAK
For this recipe, I used skirt steak. After removing the steak from its marinade, I pat it dry with a paper towel. If there are any chunks of ginger stuck to the steak, I remove them. I also allow the steak to warm up a bit closer to room temperature before placing it on a hot surface. Direct cold to direct heat will shock the meat and make it tough.
COOKING THE STEAK
I chose to grill the skirt steak for this recipe, but this could also be cooked on a cast iron skillet over medium-high stove-top heat. When grilling, I preheat the grill to 400 degrees. I place the skirt steak directly over the flame. I find that I have a hard time providing cooking times for grilling. I always stand watch over a steak because cooking conditions change. The day that I timed this recipe, it was quite windy, cooling the open grill temperature. I provide cooking times below, but I find that learning the touch test for steak is best.
The skirt steak(s) after grilling. These were medium rare.
THE TOUCH TEST
When checking the “doneness” of steak, compare the feel of the steak to the feel of the fleshy pad beneath your thumb on the palm side of your hand. When you touch your first finger to your thumb (making the okay sign), and then feel the flesh beneath your thumb, that would compare to the feel of a rare steak. Switch fingers. Touch your middle finger to your thumb. The fleshy part beneath your thumb will get tighter. That’s what a medium rare steak should feel like. Touching your ring finger to your thumb should yield a medium to medium-well feel. Touching your pinky to your thumb really tightens the flesh beneath your thumb. That feel would compare to a well-done steak.
When grilling steak without a thermometer to measure exactly, I use this method to assess the state of the steak.
STRETCHING THE MEAL
We eat a lot of leftovers at my house. It helps to make healthy meals more accessible because I don’t have to cook every night. It also helps to stretch our grocery budget out a little further. The problem I have with steak is that, as a leftover, it doesn’t generally reheat well. But I have found the solution!
My family prefers a medium steak, but when I grill, I purposefully pull a steak off when it’s medium rare. After letting the steak rest, I serve what we intend to eat that night. I will generally slice up the end pieces that are most done. After we eat, I slice the leftovers into one inch pieces and store them in the refrigerator. At the next meal, I throw the slices into a heated pan with a little olive oil. I only need to heat them for about two minutes. That warms the steak and produces a medium finish from the medium rare I begin with. This will not work well if you want a full, photo-worthy steak on everyone’s plate, but if you’re going to chop it for a salad anyway, it’s a perfect solution.
Thai Beef Salad
Ingredients
- gallon ziplock bag for marinade
- blender
- grill
- 2 lbs skirt steak
- FOR THE MARINADE:
- 1/4 c olive oil
- 1/4 c fresh squeezed lime juice (probably 2-3 limes)
- 1/4 c “No Soy” Sauce (or other soy sauce substitute)
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 inch piece of peeled ginger, grated
- FOR THE SALAD:
- preferred salad greens
- 1 English cucumber, sliced thin
- sliced green onions or red onion
- 8 oz grape tomatoes, halved
- 4 oz fresh cilantro, rough chopped
- 4 oz fresh basil, rough chopped
- 2 oz fresh mint, rough chopped
- other suggestions: thinly sliced radish, thinly sliced sweet peppers, micro-greens
Instructions
- Unwrap the skirt steak(s) and pat dry with a paper towel. Place the thawed steak(s) into a gallon sized ziplock bag.
- Place all of the marinade ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Split the resulting mixture in half. Place one half in the ziplock bag with the steak(s) and reserve the other half in the refrigerator to use as salad dressing later. Place the ziplock bag with steak(s) and marinade into the refrigerator for two hours.
- At some point before grilling the steak(s), prepare the salad ingredients and return the salad to the refrigerator.
- After marinating the steak(s) for two hours, remove from the refrigerator. Take the steak(s) out of the ziplock bag and pat dry with a paper towel. Allow the steak(s) to come to room temperature while you heat the grill.
- Pre-heat the grill to around 400 degrees Fahrenheit using medium-high heat. When hot, place the steak(s) over direct heat. Grill to desired doneness, flipping halfway through. (As a reference, I cooked the pictured steaks for five-seven minutes with the grill open, and then with the lid closed for two minutes. I opened the lid to flip the steaks and repeated the process on the other side.) Reference “The Touch Test” above to help you gauge the “doneness” of your steak(s).
- After grilling, allow the skirt steak(s) to rest for five minutes. During that time, remove the salad from the refrigerator and complete any necessary preparation. When the beef is done resting, slice it thin and place some atop each serving of salad.
- Top each salad with some of the reserved dressing, or enjoy with just the steak and greens.
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