Thai Rare Beef Salad
By Saskia Poulos, Chef and Organic Farm Assistant at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation
(Serves 6)
This is an amazingly bright salad that appeals to everyone! Feel free to switch up the vegetables depending on the time of year—tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, kohlrabi all work well here. This is the perfect vessel to transform the odds and ends you have in the fridge into something deeply satisfying; the umami bomb of a dressing wakes up whatever it hits. Don’t skip the herbs, it’s what really elevates this salad (think of them as your salad greens). When cooking the Top Sirloin Roast, make sure to only give it a quick, hard sear—overcooking the meat will cause it to toughen up.
Ingredients:
Large (1.5-2lb) Randall Lineback Top Sirloin Roast
Salt and Pepper
Nuoc Cham Dressing:
½ cup warm water
¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ cup white sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 ea garlic clove, minced or grated with a microplane zester
½ ea small red chili, very thinly sliced
1/3 cup neutral oil (like Canola or Grapeseed oil)
Salad:
2 bunches radishes, sliced ¼” thick
2 bunches radish greens
1 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
2 packed cups mint leaves
2 loosely packed cups cilantro, picked (small stems are ok)
2 cups basil leaves, torn (preferably Thai/ Purple Basil)
1 bunch scallions, thinly sliced
½ cup pickled red onions/ thinly sliced shallots covered in lime juice
Garnish:
½ cup fried shallots, homemade or purchased, found at Asian Markets
1 cup roughly chopped peanuts
1 small red hot chili (like Fresno), sliced very thin (optional)
Other salad & garnish options include (but are not limited to!): cucumbers, raw summer squash, blanched string beans, snow peas, julienned carrots, cabbage, kohlrabi etc. The name of the game is to have loads of texture and crunch! The ingredients listed above are just some of my favorites.
Method:
Preheat your grill/ grill pan. Generously season the beef on both sides with salt and pepper. Lightly coat with oil. Put on a plate and put back in the fridge. Remember that this is a rare beef salad, so you are just looking for a some nice Maillard browning on all sides, and you’re not trying to cook the inside of the meat. Keeping the steak cold will help this happen.
While the grill/ grill pan is preheating, make your dressing by whisking together all the ingredients until the sugar dissolves. Adjust sugar/ acid/ heat levels to your liking. Season with a pinch of salt.
Sear the beef on all sides over high heat. As soon as you see some nice browning, turn the steak to sear the next side. Once all sides are browned, transfer the meat to a cutting board and let rest for 10 minutes, then slice as thin as you can. When you reach the middle part of the steak, cut the wide strips into halves or thirds to make them more bite-size.
Assemble your salads by tossing all the salad ingredients with half the dressing. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Distribute among plates. Toss the beef in the same bowl, adding a couple splashes of dressing. Distribute the beef between all the plates. Season the beef with a pinch of salt, then garnish each plate with peanuts, fried shallots, and chili if you’d like a little bit more heat!