Thai Beef Salad

This is often known as London broil. And London broil is not the most tender piece of meat so it’s usually worthwhile to pound it. And if you want to, you can marinade it as well in like papaya enzyme that will break down the muscle tissue. But even if you’re going to do that, the flatter the steak is, the more of the enzyme will get into the meat.

I usually use a Ziploc over it so I don’t splatter the meat everywhere. And we’re going to go ahead and put this on the grill.

Male: You didn’t flat that that much.

Well, it’s a very big piece of meat, and what I’m going to do is I’m going to slice it really thin, kind of a slice. And so, we sort of steam this slice, that would be okay. I mean, if you want to pound the heck out of it and make it almost a flat piece, then you’re not going to have that look either when you do it. I mean, your choices are marinate, thin sliced, or just wing it. This is Rene’s Rub. When it’s down there, it’s a great rub. It’s got some sugar in it, some spices, and these flavors will be good for complementing the dish we’re doing. So, I’m just going to put that on there. So when I flip, I’ll go ahead and do it the other side as well so we flavor it on both sides.

Now for the dressing, this is a mixture of rice wine and vinegar balsamic both of which are fairly low on the acidity level and I’m really, really acidic, and that’s why they’re nice vinegars to use. Two things you don’t have to use is much oil. It just got a lighter flavor. I like balsamic which is a little bit sweet and I want some sweetness in this. I’m going to add some honey as well. This is toasted sesame oil. And when you’re buying this, make sure you get the stuff that’s dark because the toasted sesame oil has lots and lots of flavor, the regular won’t really make much of a difference.

This is a Surachi sauce. Surachi sauce is a sauce actually made down in Southern California, but it’s tomato base instead of a vinegar base like what Tabasco is. And the biggest difference is if you’re to use it to flavor things and we are putting vinegar and vinegar if we were using Tabasco, so it wouldn’t matter. What you put on your pizza like that vinegary flavor, this is a great, great stuff to put on food if you don’t want to add the vinegar flavor. I live on this stuff. I use a lot of it.

This is cilantro, and we got to have some garlic in there. You could put ginger in it. I’m a big ginger fan. I’m not a fan of it. I usually don’t use it even if the resto calls for it, and there’s nothing wrong with that unless it’s like spaghetti. If you like spaghetti, then you crush this and put it. Perhaps it’s all like this. This is really a personal taste. You like that ginger flavor, by all means, put that in.

And for the salt, we’re going to use some chili sauce. And what you want to do is put in a little bit of oil, some salad oil, canola or a light olive oil would be fine as well. But really, with all the other flavors, you don’t want to use an expensive olive oil because all these other flavors are going to overwhelm it in here. You’re really wasting your money.

And it’s a good time to taste. Put a piece of lettuce. Use your lettuce as your taster. I just need more of something. I need this to be sweetened up. You can make this in a blender if you want to and that would emulsify it. Emulsification is combining both the vinegar and the oil together. That would be a little creamier. That’s the choice you have.

Now at this point, if you want t get grill marks, let’s say we’re just doing a steak, this would be a good time to go like that. And that way, you’ll get those cool looking grill marks. But, the grill marks aren’t going to show up in the steak so it’s a good time to flip it. There’s more of the Rene’s Rub on there.

I like my beef pretty rare. Most chefs do. Cook the half of it, you’re really getting there, and especially on a London Broil because you are dealing with a piece of meat that’s a little bit tough. You keep cooking that and that will get real tough. That’s just about emulsified. That won’t take too much longer. I’ll also add a little bit of black pepper to this. As you see, it starts to become creamy. It’s all pulled together. So what we’ve done is combine both the vinegar and oil. The nice part about that is when you coat the lettuce, it will stick to the lettuce. If you’ve ever done like a tail side where they put vinegar on and oil, it just doesn’t stick to the lettuce like this will. Let’s see if we’re done now.

It needs a little more honey. Of course, this is part of cooking. Taste it, adjust it, look for that balance—you know, salt, sweet. I love sweet and salt together. I like Doritos and peanut M&Ms. And, these are also toasted sesame seeds.

If you go out to buy sesame seeds, in most cases, anything that’s Asian, you’re going to get way better price at an Asian store. Usually, about third the cost. So, it’s a good idea to go in there and get your vinegar and your soy sauce and stuff like that and just have the fridge ready to go when you need it.

Now, when you’re cooking your meat, we often use—when we’re talking about meat, a clenched fist. When you clench your fist really hard, this part of your hand is solid, that means that your meat is well done. You have a fist and you get some give, that’s medium-rare, and then if you do like that, then you know it’s rare, you just love to push. So this is pretty rare. We can tell by just doing that. Another way, if you have a—you see a nice crisscross, you know, to give presentation. Another thing that you can do is if you have a really big roast, you can take a knife like my small slicer and actually stick it right into the roast, leave it there for a few seconds and pull it out. And if you touch it to your lips like that, if it’s cold, you know it’s rare, if it’s getting warm, it’s nicely-rare, if it’s warm-warm for medium, and if it’s hot, you’ve probably overcooked your roast.

It’s almost flawless. I’ve used thermometers and all sorts of stuff and it never works as well as that does.

Well, you know what, that’s what I was going to do right now. I wasn’t going to butterfly this because if I butterfly it, all it’s going to take is about a minute and I can finish off each side of the meat. And then, do a little more seasoning. And that way, we just got a few minutes on each side. On the other, it’s raw and that may be done in just a second.

So, the dressing already sort of broke to little bits. Just give it a whip before you throw in your lettuce in there. And really, you can use any vegetable you want for this.

It’s a really good idea to toss your salad in your dressing. That way, you get a nicely even spread and just really gets the flavor over everything. Some more chestnuts. I don’t know if you guys have ever had freshwater chestnuts. You’ll see those at some of the larger Asian markets at certain times of the year and they are so sweet and so different than those you won’t even recognize that they’re totally different from these. I highly recommend them.

Let’s do some green onions. Now on slicing, you want to go to this length and you want to go really thin. So the most important is going to be your sharp knife. This kind of salad, my mom would serve in the summertime for lunch.

Male: You just happen to do that rare?

Yeah. Well, that’s the way I like it. I mean, if you want to cook it a little more, you know—actually, and then go ahead and put a little bit in the dressing. Well, I left the other one going so you guys can have a little more cooking going and my little slice of that will show you guys, here we go.

Guys, here’s how to do a tomato rose. For a tomato rose, you start off with the bottom and you’ll do a slice. This is going to be your base, and a sharp, sharp knife really helps. When you’re cutting, you got two places to look at. You got to watch right here and where you’re cutting over. So all you do is you look at that. Forget about the rest of the tomato. And what you’re doing is kind of shaving the skin off and try not to cut in between the tomato and the skin and breaking your chain here. And once in a while, I cut through, and if you’re far enough along, you usually can still roll the rose. Just let it hang on your fingers while you’re doing it. And then, wrap it around your fingers like that. That’s just a nice way of adding a little bit of extra look. Put a little extra pepper on there and a few more sesame seeds and you got a Thai beef salad.