Summer cooking to me is all about grilling and making (relatively) light meal, and hopefully requiring less cooking time in the kitchen. Grill some delicious steak, pick up fresh greens and summer vegetables from your garden, and make this hearty and delicious salad with homemade Japanese style dressing!
Watch How To Make Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing
Click here to watch on YouTube
What You Need for Steak Salad
1. Juicy Steak
Depends on your preference and whether you’re making this dish as a side or main course, choose the cut of steak that works for you. I used ribeye because I wanted this dish to be the main meal and have plenty of protein with the salad. If you’re having a party and making a huge batch of this dish, flank steak cut into small slices can be a good alternative. You just need a few slices of steak for each serving.
I sear the steak on my cast iron grill pan to make a nice grill mark on the steak and cooked till medium rare. Wait until the pan is really hot before cooking the steak.
2. Green Salad
I found this salad mix called “Organic Asian Greens” with baby spinach, pak-choi, mizuna, komatsuna, baby kale, baby chard, baby tatsoi, baby mustard, and baby collard. I think this blend goes well with my shoyu based Japanese salad dressing, but feel free to use whatever green salad you enjoy. Green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, romaine lettuce, and most kinds of salad mix would work.
3. Colorful Vegetables
Besides the greens and steak, you can make this dish more appetizing and “special” by adding colorful ingredients. For this salad, I chose to use heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, watermelon radish, red radish, and avocado to add in additional colors. Look at the salad and imagine if I had only plated green salad with the steak on top. It’s won’t be as appetizing as the current picture, right? Playing with colors is a super easy trick to make a boring looking dish into a pretty and tasty one.
4. Shoyu Dressing
Shoyu (醤油) means soy sauce the in Japanese language. In recent years, I started to see more “shoyu” on the menu at fine dining restaurants. I am not sure why the chefs decided to use “shoyu” instead of “soy sauce” but it seems that more people are now aware of this word. So let’s call today’s soy sauce base dressing shoyu dressing to make it a bit more fancy.
The dressing itself is a variation of Japanese-style wafu dressing, which is really easy to make with typical Japanese pantry ingredients. It’s made of rice vinegar, soy sauce, oil, mirin, sugar, sesame seeds, and lemon juice.
Gluten Free Soy Sauce
Soy sauce is traditionally brewed from water, wheat, soybeans and salt. Many gluten intolerant JOC readers have told me that they can’t eat Japanese food at restaurants because they won’t be able to eat food made with regular soy sauce, unless it’s 100% wheat-free tamari soy sauce or gluten-free soy sauce.
I’ve been partnering with Kikkoman to create delicious gluten-free Japanese recipes with their gluten-free soy sauce so that everyone can enjoy Japanese foods. For this recipe, I used the regular gluten-free soy sauce (blue label) which tastes just like regular soy sauce!
If you’re gluten intolerant, check out my Gluten Free Recipes for additional recipe ideas.
I hope this Japanese-style salad will be a great main or side dish to serve at your next get together with family and friends!
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Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing
Ingredients
For the Steak
- 12–16 oz ribeye steak (you can use flank steak or any cut you like; set out at room temperature for 30 minutes)
- ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- ⅛ tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 Tbsp neutral oil
For the Shoyu Dressing
- ½ onion
- 4 Tbsp gluten-free soy sauce
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1½ Tbsp mirin
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1½ Tbsp rice vinegar (unseasoned)
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice (from ½ lemon)
- 2 tsp toasted white sesame seeds
For the Green Salad
- 2 handful salad mix (I used an Asian greens mix of baby kale, mizuna, pak-choi, komatsuna, and baby spinach)
- 1 watermelon radish (thinly sliced)
- 2 red radishes (thinly sliced)
- ½ English cucumber (sliced)
- ½–1 avocado (cubed; see how to cut an avocado)
- 6 cherry tomatoes
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients.
To Prepare the Steak
- Let the steak sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Pat dry a 12–16 oz ribeye steak with a paper towel. Sprinkle both sides (and the edges) generously with ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt and ⅛ tsp freshly ground black pepper.
- Heat a cast-iron pan on high heat. When it‘s hot, add 1 Tbsp neutral oil. I usually apply it with a silicone brush. Sear the steak in the pan, about 3–4 minutes per side. During this time, do not move the steak around. You can use tongs to press down so the steak gets nice sear marks.
- Remove the steak from the heat and let it rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes. If you cut the meat right away, all the juices will come out. Cut the steak into thin slices against the grain of the meat.
To Prepare the Shoyu Dressing
- In a food processor, pureé ½ onion.
- In a 1-cup measuring cup, add 4 Tbsp gluten-free soy sauce, the pureéd onion, and 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil.
- Add 1½ Tbsp mirin, 1 Tbsp sugar, and 1½ Tbsp rice vinegar (unseasoned).
- Add 2 Tbsp lemon juice and 2 tsp toasted white sesame seeds and whisk it all together.
To Assemble the Salad
- Assemble the green salad with 2 handful salad mix (my Asian greens mix had baby kale, Asian greens, and baby spinach in it), 1 watermelon radish (thinly sliced), 2 red radishes (thinly sliced), ½ English cucumber (sliced), ½–1 avocado (cubed), and 6 cherry tomatoes. You can choose any leafy salad and other salad ingredients you like.
- Place the steak slices on top and drizzle with the shoyu dressing.
To Store
- You can keep the dressing and steak in separate airtight containers and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Nutrition
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Full Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Kikkoman USA. Thoughts and opinions stated are my own.
