As you’ve probably noticed by now, I really love salads that can stand their ground as a complete dinner. When I saw this recipe for Skirt Steak and Horseradish Potato Salad in the August issue of Bon Appetit, I immediately added it to the must-try list (this issue’s must try post is coming shortly!). After all, what’s not to love? Skirt steak’s my favorite cut of meat and super-easy to cook, potatoes are my all-time-favorite food, and we’ll both take any excuse to eat more horseradish!
The best part of this salad? It was delicious and so easy was to put together.
First step in this recipe is making the horseradish dressing:
Every single time I make a fresh dressing for a salad I marvel at how much better made-from-scratch dressing is compared to bottled. We didn’t eat many salads growing up (Latin family = lots of rice and fried stuff, very little salad!) but when we did it was either dressed with just oil and vinegar or lemon, or we had dressing out of a bottle. Now don’t get me wrong, I like bottled dressing just fine and still eat it, but there is no comparing it to the fresh stuff. No matter which recipe I try, I’m continuously amazed at how good the dressing tastes!
Some dressings have been more successful than others, though. This particular dressing calls for a lot of shallots to be mixed in:
And I mean a lot. 2 cups worth!
I don’t know if my shallots were particularly spicy or what, but I used less than called for and it was still too much for us! Next time I’ll cut the shallot amount in half, which I think will be exactly right for us. This is one of the few recipes I’ve come across that actually gives a standard measurement for the amount of shallots, so I can’t even blame this problem on a non-standard measurement! Which you probably already know is one of my peeves when it comes to recipes . . .
Anyway after the dressing was mixed, the next thing I did was set the potatoes to steam:
While they steamed, I heated my grill pan with some oil and started the steaks:
If you sometimes cook meat on the stove top and don’t own one of these yet, run, don’t walk, to get one! The one I own is similar to this inexpensive grill pan from Calphalon, and it’s definitely a contender for one of my favorite cooking tools. I don’t use it that often since I don’t cook meat that much, but it’s totally worth it for the gorgeous way it cooks steaks.
Just look at those “grill” marks!
As you probably know the secret to getting nice marks like these is to not touch the meat. Just plop it down and let it sit there for 3-4 minutes, then flip it once and let it sit again for 3-4 minutes. It’s so hard to do this because you really want to peek and poke and prod. I know, I get it, I do too! But trust me, don’t do it. Be patient and wait to flip it, you’ll be glad you did!
After you take the steaks off the heat, you definitely need to let them rest. I think mine would have benefited from a slightly longer rest given how much came out of them when I sliced them up, but I was hungry! I think these rested for about 5 minutes before I cut them, but maybe it should have been more like 10 minutes.
During that 5 minute rest I quickly tossed the potatoes and tomatoes with the dressing:
It was at this point that I realized I hadn’t bought the snap peas called for in the recipe! By this point it was much too late to run out and buy them (remember, I was hungry!) so I decided to just do without. I think they really do add something both visually and nutritionally to this recipe though, so I definitely encourage you to include them if you try this!
We ate this salad with all the ingredients (well except for the watercress) still warm, and it was absolutely delicious. It’s a bit weird to think of a warm potato salad, but in this particular case I think it is better warm than it would have been cold or even at room temperature.
The classic combination of steak and horseradish was wonderful as always, and the creamy potatoes covered in dressing went with them perfectly. The nice juicy tomatoes were a great fresh counterpoint to the richness of everything else (as the peas would have been, too!). Like I said, the only thing I would change next time is the amount of shallots — we found them overwhelming and ended up picking around them after the first few bites!
