How to Make Spicy Thai style Steak and Rice Noodle Salad

Alright step one to put together our spicy Thai steak and noodle salad is we’re going to make a little wet rub for the steak. We’re going to use a skirt steak so that was a teaspoon of – and I’ll spell that on the recipe page but it’s an Asian hot sauce. That was a little dusting of chipotle pepper. That’s a small -- about an eight of a teaspoon. That’s all I had left. This is a red curry powder that’s a McCormick brand. That’s in most supermarkets but it’s a really nice blend of coriander and cumin and a bunch of different exotic Asian spices so that’s a red curry powder about a teaspoon and this is fish sauce, you’ve got to get some fish sauce. So it’s a fermented sauce like a soy sauce, it’s very salty but has a really unique interesting flavor that’s just perfect in this dish so I want you to find some of that, don’t be afraid and skirt steak is a long strip of steak. It looks like a skirt apparently, although that’s a pretty short skirt. That was about a pound in a quarter size piece. I sliced that into five or six pieces. Don’t worry about trimming this. There’s a little bit of fat on it but it’s not the silver to skin tough kind of fat. It’s going to melt in the pan so just give that a little toss with our wet rub and then minimum 30 minutes in the fridge with that. You could leave it for a couple of hours or even overnight if you want to but 30 minutes will be the minimum and we’re going to just simply sear that meat on both sides. I get about a tablespoon of this oil in a hot pan. Be a little careful, that first piece of skirt steak is going to be kind of thin and the one at the other end is going to be kind of a little bit thicker so you’re going to have to adjust your cooking maybe take the thin one out a little sooner. So that was about four minutes on one side and then about four minutes on the other. When that tong kind of bounces back or when that meat bounces back you can feel it’s getting about medium rare. I turn the heat off and just to cool it down and glaze the bottom of the pan a little bit, get a little more of that juice off of there or a little more of that caramelized meat juice, a little quarter cup of water and just throw that in a bowl and let it cool down so you can slice it. This is 8 ounces of rice and noodle also known as Thai stick. You can find this in the Asian section. It’s rice noodle, the same thing they make pad thai with, cover that with boiling water for 8 minutes and put your time around because if you go to look, you’re going to have mush. So 8 minutes with the boiling water. In the meantime, I have 8 minutes to prep the other veggies so I took a whole bunch of mint, that’s one whole bunch, very important flavor component in this dish is the mint and we’re doing the classic chefinod which means you take celery to these leaves, you roll him up tight and you give it a thin slice across and you get these beautiful ribbons of mint and I don’t want to chop that, I want it just like that. It’s going to be beautiful. This is a Japanese vegetable slicer. It comes with a bunch of different blades. I’m using the one that does the fine little threads of carrot. You can use a vegetable or a cheese grater for this and it does come with a plastic guard to hold the vegetables but I’m not using it because I’m, what’s the word, stupid. So if you’re stupid, don’t use the holder, you’ll take your fingertips off probably but be really careful with that. So after 8 minutes my noodles were perfect. I drained them. Rinsed them with cold water and added my peanut sauce that you’re going to see in another demo, check out the peanut sauce demo. It’s a simple peanut dressing, if you want to use store bought peanut dressing, as long as it’s good quality, not a problem. So I’m going to toss that with enough sauce to moisten it all the way through and I will start adding some veggies here. I ended up I guess it was almost like three quarters of a cup of the carrot. So we’re going to throw that in and again, I used that Japanese grater because it just makes perfect beautiful little threads, again presentation, consistency, that’s where you bring our cuisine up another layer, the grater doesn’t look bad but those vegetable slices are really cheap. I’ve got to cheat here. This is angel hair coleslaw bagged right from the grocery store. I can't use a whole cabbage. I can't buy a four pound cabbage and slice it all up. What am I going to do with all that cabbage? So I love these little bags of the angel hair so convenient. So you can add your carrot and your coleslaw mix or just cabbage basically. Give that a toss. Man, it’s looking good already but it gets better. Throw in your mint. Again, there’s a whole bunch of mints. It seems like a lot but it’s really important in this dish. The only way to screw the steak up is to cut it with the grain. You’ve got to go against the grain. You can see the grain, look at the grain. Cut it across the grain as thin as you can slice it. The thinner the better as you eat that cold slipper noodle with that delicious spicy steak. You want it to basically melt right into it. So no big chunks, take your time. Slice it thin, you see that. Man, it looks good. So I served it with a wedge of lime. Again the noodles are cold, the steak is room temperature or even a little bit warm. I topped it with some – and a little more of the mints and that’s a fantastic interesting Asian style nice light dinner. Anyway, check out the video for the dressing and I think you’re really going to enjoy this. Enjoy.