I have a problem with steak salads: I love them, which isn’t actually a problem at all, unless you call a complete inability to stop eating something until not a trace remains a problem. Which I do, and which I have. But I already said that.
Could you repeat that, Ree?
Sorry. Talking to myself.
Again.
This isn’t my first rodeo with steak salads. I made this Ginger Steak Salad two or three years ago. Angels sang. And I made this Big Steak Salad a year or so ago. Same result, and that time they may have even sung John Denver. That’s when you know something wonderful has just occurred.
And last week, this beautiful plateful of wonder.
Try it this week. It’s a cinch to throw together, and the dressing is so spectacularly simple, you’ll want to make extra so you can use it as a veggie dip in the days and weeks to come. It’s really tasty.
Let’s make the salad! The angels are waiting in the wings…warming up their vocal cords.
First, we need to make the marinade for the flank steak: drizzle some olive oil into a bowl.
Then add some Worcestershire. And I’d like to take this opportunity to point out the hard water spots on my bowl before someone else does.
Thank you for allowing my voice to be heard.
Crack open a can of chipotle peppers, which I’m pretty much obsessed with these days. Would you all do me a big favor and go eat a whole chipotle pepper today? You need to make friends with them so I can keep using them in my recipes. Not really! Don’t do that. If you ate a whole chipotle pepper today, tomorrow you would come egg my house. And as hot as it is outside, that egg would probably fry the second it hit my thirty-year-old cedar siding.
Wood plank fried eggs! Sounds divine.
What I’m saying, guys, is that:
Chipotle peppers are natural
Chipotle peppers are good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
And that’s all I’m saying.
Oh, and hang on to the rest of that can of chipotles. We’ll need ’em in a second.
To the marinade, add some ground cumin…
And some oregano. And a little honey, too.
Grab a beautiful, flavorful flank steak. Skirt steak would work, too, speaking of things I’m obsessed with lately.
Skirt steak? Fugghetaboutit.
Pour the marinade over the steak, turning it over to coat the other side. Then cover the steak (or throw it in a ziploc) and refrigerate/marinate it for a couple of hours.
Next, make the chipotle dressing. It’s a very, very, very complicated multi-step process, so really hunker down and concentrate. You won’t want to miss a step of this!
STEP 1: Throw a big jar of mayonnaise into a blender or food processor.
STEP B: Dump in the rest of the can of chipotles.
I used a big jar of mayonnaise and a big can of chipotle, because I like to have leftover dressing to use as dip, a base for pasta salad, and other yummy things. But you could easily cut this in half and it’d be more than enough.
STEP TRES: Mix it up until it’s totally combined.
And that, my friends, Romans, and countrymen, is one delicious dressing. Transfer it to a container and stick it in the fridge until you need it.
After the flank steak has marinated a couple of hours, pull it out of the fridge and grill it over a hot flame. You want to keep it in the rare/medium-rare range, so it really only needs about a minute-and-a-half to two minutes per side.
Remove it from the heat and let it rest for about ten minutes.
Meantime, slice up some tomato, cucumber, and red onion.
Then slice the meat into really thin shingles–cut on the extreme diagonal to get as thin a slice as possible.
Gosh. Garsh. Garshk. This looks so good. I love a good pile of thinly sliced flank steak.
To serve each salad, mound lots of greens on a plate. Drape slices of warm steak down the sides like cascading mountain streams of…meat.
Meat streams.
Beef falls.
Never mind.
Arrange some cucumbers and tomatoes around the side…then put some pretty red onion slices on top.
Then grab a big, whopping spoonful of chipotle dressing…
And drizzle it all around the salad.
Goodness gracious. You can’t know. You just…you can’t know.
Here’s what happens: the warm meat hits the cool greens, and the dressing just sort of makes it all a big pile of harmonious paradise. The crisp and cool tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions give the whole thing some color and crunch.
You will absolutely love this.
Enjoy!
Here’s the handy dandy printable:
