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/Dressing
Creating a salad base is pretty simple. The more complex piece of this recipe is the marinade and salad dressing. 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.
(The above images represent the skirt steak(s) before trimming, in the marinade, and after being removed from the marinade and patted dry.)
Preparing the 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, you can 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.
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 may not work well if you want a full, beautiful steak on everyone’s plate, but if you’re going to chop it for a salad anyway, it’s a perfect solution.
As always, enjoy the recipe! Adapt, and make it your own.
Thai Beef Salad
Ingredients
– gallon ziplock bag for marinade
– grill
– blender
– 2 lbs skirt steak
For the Marinade/Dressing:
– 1/4 c olive oil
– 1/4 c fresh squeezed lime juice (probably 2-3 limes)
– 1/4 c “No Soy” Sauce (or soy sauce or other alternative)
– 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
– 8 oz. grape tomatoes, halved
– sliced green onions or red onion
– 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
Directions
- Unwrap the skirt steak(s) and pat it dry with a paper towel. Place the thawed skirt steak into a gallon size 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.
- At some point before grilling the steak(s), prepare the salad ingredients and return the salad to the refrigerator.
- After the steak(s) have marinated for two hours, remove from the refrigerator. Take the steak(s) out of the zip lock bag and pat dry with a paper towel. Allow the steak(s) to come to room temperature while you heat your grill.
- Pre-heat the grill to around 400 degrees 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 my steak for five-seven minutes with the grill-lid open, and then closed the lid for two minutes. I then opened the lid to flip the steak 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 fixings from the refrigerator and complete any necessary preparation. When the beef is done resting, slice it thin and place some atop each salad serving.
- Top each salad with some of the reserved dressing, or enjoy with just the steak and greens.
Here on SpringForestFarm.com, Jennifer Taylor Schmidt writes beef recipes for the busy, natural homemaker. It is possible to seek optimal health with limited time and money. Join Jennifer in future posts as she explores the possibilities found in a 1/4 and a 1/2 beeve. You can also find her thoughts and personal health journey on RealFoodRealHealing.com.
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