easy quick Thai "dressing" for steak salad?

Does anyone have an easy recipe for dressing for a thai-ish steak salad? I am not looking for something "authentic", just fast and tasty. If the recipe does not have lemongrass, that is a plus for us. I have searched the internet and experimented from there but I am just not happy with the proportions.

I am looking for something that can be whipped up from ready-on-hand ordinary ingredients, not something that would require special trip to H-Mart. Is that possible?

Does your recipe use a fresh herb? Our garden is overrun by mint and I keep telling myself that mint should work in a thai steak salad but if not, maybe regular old basil would be ok?

Just trying to get it in the ballpark...

Thanks for any help! -Joy

I use something similar to David Thompson's recipe which is a little better than 2:1 lime juice to fish sauce with mashed garlic/birds eye chillies to taste. IMO mint would work great, as would cilantro.

I love this recipe from Leela over at shesimmers.com. I've made it several times, even without the galangal, and it's great. I've used it with beef and thought it worked very well.

ETA: I wanted to add that the acid in this dressing will definitely toughen the beef if it's applied too early. So, you wouldn't want to dress it too far in advance of serving it. It the past, I've actually used it as a dip with beef.

=R=

Don't forget this post.
Similar to AlekH, it's 2:1 acid to fish sauce, herbs, alliums, chile.

See this post for what I used in making my beef heart salad for the picnic. You can play around with the ratio of fish sauce to lime juice, but I much prefer a ratio of closer to 1:1 - depends on how funky you want it I suppose. Fresh herbs go a long way too.

I've used a combo (sorry, I'm not good with measuring things) of lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger and garlic to make a great beef salad dressing. If I had to hazard a guess on proportions, I'd probably say 2 tbsp. lime juice, 1/2 tsp palm sugar, couple of good glugs of fish sauce, tsp sesame oil, tsp soy sauce, 1/2 tsp minced ginger and 1/2 tsp of minced garlic. If you want heat, add a 1/4 tsp minced thai chilis. Yum.

ronnie_suburban wrote:I love this recipe from Leela over at shesimmers.com. I've made it several times, even without the galangal, and it's great. I've used it with beef and thought it worked very well.

ETA: I wanted to add that the acid in this dressing will definitely toughen the beef if it's applied too early. So, you wouldn't want to dress it too far in advance of serving it. It the past, I've actually used it as a dip with beef.

=R=

shesimmers recipes always turn out so well and that just looks delicious.

BR wrote:See this post for what I used in making my beef heart salad for the picnic. You can play around with the ratio of fish sauce to lime juice, but I much prefer a ratio of closer to 1:1 - depends on how funky you want it I suppose. Fresh herbs go a long way too.

That salad was great but I'll warn the OP that it was definitely hot (in a good way)

Thread definitely has me in the mood for a thai beef salad tomorrow night.

AlekH wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:I love this recipe from Leela over at shesimmers.com. I've made it several times, even without the galangal, and it's great. I've used it with beef and thought it worked very well.

ETA: I wanted to add that the acid in this dressing will definitely toughen the beef if it's applied too early. So, you wouldn't want to dress it too far in advance of serving it. It the past, I've actually used it as a dip with beef.

=R=

shesimmers recipes always turn out so well and that just looks delicious

I agree. Leela's cookbook, Simple Thai Food, is due out on May 12. I already pre-ordered mine from Amazon.

=R=

Thanks very much everyone for all the replies! This is great. Exactly what I was looking for. Time to dig out that last ribeye steak from the deep freeze and fire up the old grill. --Joy

ronnie_suburban wrote:I agree. Leela's cookbook, Simple Thai Food, is due out on May 12. I already pre-ordered mine from Amazon.

As did I.........

AlekH wrote:

BR wrote:See this post for what I used in making my beef heart salad for the picnic. You can play around with the ratio of fish sauce to lime juice, but I much prefer a ratio of closer to 1:1 - depends on how funky you want it I suppose. Fresh herbs go a long way too.

That salad was great but I'll warn the OP that it was definitely hot (in a good way).

Thanks Alek - I did try to bring a little heat, but I think that with good steak, you could really go pretty simple - fish sauce, lime juice and fresh herbs. Mint is great, so is cilantro, and a little basil or other fresh, bright herbs could work well too. Depending upon the season, I've also added various lettuces, tomatoes, even avocados to the mix. As for the other add-ins I listed in my recipe, none are required - just depends where you want to go with the salad.