Spicy Thai-style Steak and Rice Noodle Salad – Hot and Cold, Sweet and Sour, Soft and Crisp; an adventure in culinary contrasts!

This is my favorite Asian-style noodle salad. There are so many different flavors, temperatures and textures mingling together. I love almost any pasta salad with meat, but what I really love about this one is the chewy rice noodles I use as the base. As you’ll see, they don’t really get “cooked,” but simply covered in very hot water for 8 minutes before being drained and rinsed in cold water. You should be able find the rice noodles (sometimes called Rice Sticks) in the Asian section of any large grocery store. They are a perfect contrast to the crisp cold vegetables mixed into them, which is a perfect contrast to the warm savory slices of the spicy steak, which is perfect with the sweet and tangy peanut dressing, and so on. This is just a fun dish to eat.

The beef we’re using for the salad is skirt steak. It’s very flavorful and easy to work with. You’ll find it next to the flank steak in the butcher case. While you’re in the Asian section at the store there’s couple of exotic ingredients we’ll need to pick-up. For both the dressing, and to marinate the steak, we need Shiracha, which is a hot Asian chili sauce. We’ll also use Asian Fish Sauce in the marinade. This is a very common addition to many Southeast-Asian dishes and is well worth finding at the market! By the way, you should still have some fish sauce leftover from the caramel chicken recipe.



Ingredients:
1 skirt steak (about a 1 1/4lb)
1/4 tsp chipotle chili powder
1 tsp shiracha or other hot sauce
1 tsp red curry powder
2 tbl fish sauce
8 oz. rice noodles
1 bunch mint
2 cups shredded cabbage
3/4 cup grated carrot
peanut dressing to coat, about a cup
chopped peanuts to garnish
lime to garnish

The Peanut dressing I also demo in this post is a very basic version, and doesn’t have lots of additional ingredients since I usually use this as a base for other recipes, as I did here. As Chefs are always telling young cooks, you can always add ingredients, but you can’t take them out. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup seasoned rice vinegar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 limes, juiced
1 tsp Shiracha
12 drops sesame oil
1 clove garlic