Zesty Thai Salad with Beef

This salad is a perfect fit if you need to use the beef leftover, but of course, if you’re using a fresh one, it’ll be just as good.

Asian cuisine is always a taste and flavor explosion. They are very good in taste combinations like sweet, bitter, sour but they are balanced at the same time. Not a single taste is more dominant than the others.

Today I’ll share with you one of those recipes. Let’s make a deal, you can regulate the amount of chili pepper in dressing as you want and choose any salad you like. Lettuce, romaine, iceberg – doesn’t matter, choose anyone you like.

Just remember, you need to wash thoroughly the leaves on the head of lettuce and cut off the head itself. Also very important to dry finely the leaves after washing, but we’ll talk about it below.

What You Need to Cook Zesty Thai Salad with Beef

INGREDIENTS:

For salad:

• 250 g (8,8 oz) beef leftover, if you’re planning to use raw one, read the recipe how to cook it
• 100-150 g (3,5-5,3 oz) of iceberg lettuce (or anyone else you like/can afford)
• 5-6 cherry tomatoes
• ½ cucumber
• ¼ of small sweet onion (the red or white one)
• A bundle of parsley or cilantro (what you like best)
• A handful of peanuts
• 2 twigs of fresh mint (just leaves)
• Olive oil
• Salt, pepper

For dressing:

• 2 cloves of garlic
• parsley/cilantro stalks, which you used for salad
• ¼ – 1 chili pepper, take less if you don’t like spicy or more if do
• 2 tsp of sugar
• 2 tbsp of fish sauce
• 3 tbsp of lime juice
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• Salt, pepper to taste

EQUIPMENT:

• Blender or mortar (not necessarily)

How to Make Zesty Thai Salad with Beef: Step-by-Step Instructions🔪

STEP 1. PREPARE THE DRESSING

Nothing special, we’ve taken 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped parsley/cilantro stalks, and the right amount of chili pepper (¼ – 1). Put to the blander or mortar.

If you’re using a blender, add the rest of the ingredients right away and let it work for a minute.

If you’re using mortar, after you added all the ingredients from above, work with a pestle until it turns into a homogeneous mass.

If you have neither blender nor mortar, not a problem. In this case, just chop the ingredients as finely as possible and mix them with liquids and sugar in a glass or small finger bowl.

After you shredded add the rest ingredients for dressing: 2 tsp of sugar, 2 tbsp of fish sauce, 3 tbsp of lime juice, 1 tbsp of olive oil, and pepper.

Taste, salt, if needed.

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STEP 2. PREPARE THE LETTUCE AND CUT THE VEGETABLES.

First, lettuce. I used the iceberg 100-150 g (3,5-5,3 oz).

The first thing you need to do is to wash it. It’s better to do it this way: finely wash the sink, close the drain and take on water. Sort the leaves from the head, soak in the sink, and leave for about 5 minutes. Check them from time to time, and rinse with hands under the water.

Take off the salad, remove the water. Cut off the hard part from the leaves and throw away. The remaining leaves roll and chop into 1-2 cm pieces. Now you need to dry them. I use a salad drier like this, which I’ve bought in IKEA.

If you don’t have such a thing- just finely shake the water off the leaves and then dry with a pepper towel.

The leaves should be almost completely dry.

This rule is good for all kinds of salad leaves. The thing is, if there’s some moisture left, the dressing won’t wash over every piece as it should be and the main part of it just drains down.

While the salad is washing, move on to the rest of the vegetables.

Cut half of a cucumber into 0,5 cm slices, ¼ of onion into half rings, and 5-6 cherry tomatoes in half.

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STEP 3. SLICE/PREPARE THE BEEF, FRY THE PEANUTS.

In case you are using the leftovers as I do, just slice 250 g (8,8 oz) of beef into less than 1 cm pieces.

If you’re using the fresh one, I recommend to cook it according to the following instruction:

Heat up the oven up to 180 degrees. Salt and pepper the beef from both sides, warm up the frying pan on the high heat, add 2 tbsp of oil. Put there meat and fry for about 1-2 minutes from both sides until nice golden crust.

Put a frying pan with meat to the oven for 8-10 minutes. When it’s ready, let it rest for 10 minutes. Then you can slice it and add it to a salad.

A handful of peanuts fry for a couple of minutes. If you’re using in-shell peanuts, peel it.

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STEP 4. MAKE A SALAD AND ADD DRESSING

Put a salad leaves on a suitable plate and place vegetables on top.

Add beef slices and peanuts (you can chop them and sprinkle with crumbs, or use whole ones).

Put mint (2 twigs) and parsley/cilantro leaves on top. Dress a salad.