Healthy Thai Beef Salad packs a tonne of flavour

Thai Beef Salad is a healthy and nutritious dish made with tender greens and perfectly seared beef that is coated with a savoury Thai salad dressing packed with lots of flavour. It makes for clean eating.

This salad is also quick and easy to make, besides being light and refreshing as a quick lunch.

You can use top sirloin steak or trimmed rib eye steak for grilling. Both are excellent choices as the beef is meaty, lean, juicy and flavourful. They also go well with the herbs and fish sauce dressing.

Ingredients

• 450 g grilled top sirloin or trimmed rib eye steak
• A tiny bit of cooking oil

For the salad

• 1 cup spinach leaves
• 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• 2 thinly sliced shallots
• 6-8 cherry tomatoes cut in halves

For the dressing

• 1/4 cup lime juice (5 tablespoons)
• 1/4 cup fish sauce (5 tablespoons)
• Sugar to taste
• 1-2 red cili padi finely chopped, depending on how hot you like it

Method

• Preheat a pan on high heat until very hot. Add a bit of cooking oil and spread it evenly across the bottom.
• Let the steak sit in the pan for around a minute to get a nice crust.
• Flip over the steak and repeat.
• Reduce heat to medium and cook to your liking.
• Wrap the meat in aluminium foil and allow to rest for about five to ten minutes before thinly slicing across the grain.
• In a bowl whisk together fish sauce, lime juice, bird’s eye chilies and sugar to taste.
• Toss in the mint leaves, cilantro, shallots and cherry tomatoes. Mix well.
• Serve the salad mix on top of a bed of spinach and drizzle some of the dressing over.

Tips

• If you have access to a grill, this will produce even better results.
• Cooking time of the steak depends on how thick it is and if you prefer it rare, medium rare or well done.
• For a less spicy alternative, use fresh red finger length chilies with seeds but remove the central stem.
• Temper the meat by letting it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes before grilling/cooking.

For the original recipe go to Rasa Malaysia.

Low Bee Yinn is a food blogger and cookbook author.