Spiced crispy beef salad with noodles & crunchy veg
25 mins
Not Too Tricky
serves 2
About the recipe
Delicious salads are all about being inventive with your combos, and I’m a real fan of mixing up the textures to create the perfect balance of crunch, lightness and excitement. Mixing and matching the way you chop your ingredients, or spending a bit of time and care to finely slice or speed-peel some elements of your salad is only ever going to be a good thing, and can often be the difference between an average and a fantastic salad. Beef is packed with zinc, which means it’s great for helping you to get the goodness out of the food you eat – bonus!
Ingredients
100g fine rice noodles
¼ a bunch of fresh coriander
¼ a bunch of fresh mint
extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
4cm piece of ginger
1 fresh red chilli
2 spring onions
1 carrot
½ a cucumber
1 gem lettuce
olive oil
200g lean minced beef
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 lime
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 teaspoon runny honey
Method
- Tip the noodles into a bowl, cover with boiling water and leave to soak for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pick the herb leaves and add the stalks to the noodles.
- When the noodles are tender, discard the herb stalks and drain in a sieve. Refresh under cold water, then toss in a little extra virgin olive oil.
- Peel and finely slice the garlic, peel and finely chop the ginger, and deseed and finely slice the chilli. Trim and finely chop the spring onions.
- Scrub, trim, then speed-peel the carrot into long ribbons. Halve the cucumber lengthways, scoop out the seeds and finely slice into half moons.
- Trim and separate the gem lettuce leaves, then divide between your plates.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the beef, then stir-fry for 8 to 10 minutes, or until crispy, breaking it up with the back of a spoon as you go. Add the garlic and half the ginger for the last few minutes.
- Mix the soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and half the lime juice together to make a dressing.
- Tip the noodles into a large bowl, then toss together with the carrot, cucumber, remaining ginger, most of the spring onion and two-thirds of the dressing, and drop in little piles onto the lettuce leaves.
- When the beef is crispy, add the sesame seeds and honey and cook for 1 minute, then scatter over the plates.
- Tear up the herb leaves, then sprinkle over the salad along with the remaining spring onion and the sliced chilli. Drizzle over the remaining dressing and serve with lime wedges for squeezing over.
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