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