Thai Beef Salad

pronounced Yam neua yang

This is one Thai dish that I really love-along with most people who try it.  Like most Thai "yams" salads it's a pungent fiery dish balanced with sweetness.  Most salad dressings balance sweet/sour but the Thai beef salad reigns supreme on a kick-your-ass taste experience.  

I personally love the grilled variety but it can be made with roasted or even fried beef.  Overall, the grilled variety made (mai souk) med-rare really allows for the taste of beef to combine with the other strong flavors in the salad.  

Like most great dishes it's simple to make but long on taste. 

Basic Ingredients:

dressing

• fish sauce
• fresh (manao) thai lemon juice.  Substitute FRESH lime or lemon juice ok
• minced garlic
• palm sugar (reg. sugar ok to sub.)
• fresh spicy-ass thai  chilis (sub. scotch bonnet or habanero OK)

salad ingredients

• sweet fresh julienned onions
• cucumbers peeled and diced or sliced thin
• tomatoes chopped chunky bite size
• fresh celery leaves (important ingredient and hard to sub.-offers unique seasoning) these can be trimmed from a full stalk of fresh celery.  In Thailand these leaves are more available than the stalks of celery themsleves.  Another insight to cultural/market differences
• grilled beef to one's liking (recommend med. rare)

this dish's preparation is really a to one's taste kind of thing.  However, the true Thai way is to make the entire dressing in a large wooden mortar and pestal bowl.  

Step 1

place garlic into bowl and mince or pound.  

place chilis in and do the same as garlic

add palm sugar

squeeze in fresh juice

add fish sauce sparingly to taste until it tastes right.

*note that the dressing should be very strong in taste at this point as it will mix with the natural water in the cucumbers later and become fairly diluted.

Step 2

toss in the dressing with all the other salad ingredients. mix well and let it marinate for just a few minutes.  This dish can be served warm if you want to add the just cooked beef last.

if the taste is too light one can add fish sauce, sugar, or juice depending on if you need to pump up the salty, sweet, or sour taste.  Always remember that balancing those three flavors are the key to a great Thai dish!

Enjoy!

DK

PRIME aged Thai Beef-Don't believe the hype

Steak, glorious marbled, striated, delicious juicy steak.   Thailand is NOT a place well known for steak, as a westerner would know it.   However I will talk a bit about my Chokchai Steakhouse experience in Bangkok.

Chains like Ruth's Chris and Mortons really do a tremendous job mostly because they understand the basics.

1. Great (aged) USDA Prime beef cuts.
2. Super heated cooking methods that allow for serious searing of the meat
3. heated plates, great ambience, and nice sides to complement the steak.

Chokchai is probably one of the most well-known chains for steak in Thailand. They do a great job marketing their fresh milk ice-cream products from their respective dairy farms through the brand called Umm-Milk!  However, the beef doesn't quite follow the success of their dairy division.

I ordered what they call on their menu the Prime 30 day aged steak platter (T-bone cut)  The smaller portion was surprisingly hefty-a plus.  However, the meat did not meet the initial excitement I had upon reading that the meat was actually aged.  In Thailand aging is not a common or even well-understood concept.  

I enjoy my steak "pittsburghed" or black/blue which means it's charbroiled & seared black on the outside and red-rare inside.  A true steak lover will always eat their steak this way. However, the meat was not even as tender as the Thai-French version that I buy from Villa markets when I want to fire up the bb-q for home-made steaks in Bangkok.   Furthermore, the med-rare steak was presented on a sizzling cast iron platter.  The presentation is nice, but the problem is that the steak keeps right on cooking in front of you; and half way through, despite my frantic cutting and swallowing, the steak turned med-well...urrgh!  Also, no great steak ever needs to be served with brown gravy sauce like they do at Chokchai.  Sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper should be the only seasoning needed.

Overall Chokchai is worth taking in a steak as the prices are decent and the restaurant is appealing.  Think of it as more of a family steakhouse rather than a great premium one.   

Thainese Take-Out's inaugural post

Hello and welcome to my food blog that is "Thainese Take-Out". A foodie since birth, I have decided to elevate my netizen status from taker to giver/taker. This blog will chronicle all my adventures in food and lifestyle from my home base in Bangkok to other spots throughout Asia/Pacifica and the US. I hope you love my blog as much as I love great food and I look forward to sharing it all here with you.

here's to your next great meal!
DK