Steak and Broccoli-Rabe Salad with Cannellini Beans and Cherry Balsamic
Seared steak rested until the juices come back, broccoli rabe blanched hard and browned in the steak pan, and a cherry-balsamic dressing sharp enough to stand up to both.
The parts that change whether this works tonight.
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- Servings
- 4
- Timing
- 40 minutes
- Equipment
- Not separately declared
- Make-ahead
- Not separately declared
- Holding
- Not separately declared
- Leftovers
- Not separately declared
- Dietary notes
- Not separately declared
- Method map
- 12 ingredient lines · 6 method steps
Pairing
Wine — Chianti or Côtes du Rhône. Mixed drink — Negroni, small and stirred. Teetotaler — Cherry-balsamic shrub. Bitter greens and cherry balsamic already wrote the pairing.
Tools
A heavy skillet that holds heat, an instant-read thermometer, a wide pot for blanching, and a cutting board with a groove around the edge that you will use as a serving vessel
Ingredients · swaps in parentheses
Sirloin or strip steak (flank, flat iron), kosher salt, black pepper, neutral oil, broccoli rabe (broccolini, escarole), cannellini beans, cherry tomatoes, red onion, balsamic vinegar, unsweetened cherry juice or dried tart cherries, Dijon mustard, honey, olive oil
Magic
Before the steak comes out of the pan, grate the zest of a whole lemon onto the cutting board with a pinch of flaky salt and a spoonful of olive oil, and smear it into a patch. Rest the steak directly on it. The zest blooms in the hot fat, the resting juices pick it up, and when you pour the board scrapings over the sliced meat you get a lemon note that is aromatic rather than sour, which is a different animal from squeezing lemon over beef. Not feeling brave? Zest the lemon into the dressing instead and leave the board clean.
Gotcha
Blanched broccoli rabe holds an astonishing amount of water in its florets. Squeeze it hard in a towel before it goes near the hot skillet, or it will steam instead of brown and then leak into the dressing and turn the whole salad watery.
A steak salad usually fails for one reason: everything is cold. Cold sliced beef in cold vinaigrette on cold greens is a plate of components that never got introduced. The version that works keeps three things warm and lets them meet the cold ones. Steak still radiating heat, broccoli rabe straight out of the skillet, and a dressing that has been sitting at room temperature rather than the refrigerator door.
Serves: 4 Time: 40 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 pound sirloin or strip steak
- Kosher salt and black pepper
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil
- 1 bunch broccoli rabe, trimmed
- 1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, rinsed
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cherry juice, or 1 tablespoon finely chopped dried tart cherries plus 1 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1/4 cup olive oil
Method
Where the time goes
- Salt the steak early and dry it late
- 8–10 minSear hard, rest longer than feels necessary145°F
- 2 minBlanch the rabe and squeeze it out
- Sear the rabe in the steak pan
- Whisk the dressing
- Build and slice last
- Salt the steak early and dry it late. Season it generously with salt and pepper and leave it out while you set up. Just before it hits the pan, blot the surface dry with a paper towel. Surface moisture is the difference between a crust and a gray band.
- Sear hard, rest longer than feels necessary. Get a heavy skillet properly hot, add the neutral oil, and sear the steak until deeply browned on both sides and it reaches at least 145°F with a 3-minute rest. Move it to a board and leave it there for a full 8 to 10 minutes. For the magic version, smear lemon zest, flaky salt, and olive oil onto the board first and rest the steak on top of it.
- Blanch the rabe and squeeze it out. Drop the trimmed broccoli rabe into heavily salted boiling water for 2 minutes, then drain it and press the water out in a clean towel. It should feel almost dry.
- Sear the rabe in the steak pan. Pour off all but a slick of fat, return the pan to high heat, and sear the rabe briefly until there are brown patches on the leaves and stems. Two minutes, moving it once.
- Whisk the dressing. Balsamic, cherry juice or the soaked chopped cherries, Dijon, honey, and olive oil, with salt and pepper. It should taste slightly too sharp on a spoon, because the beef and the beans will both blunt it.
- Build and slice last. Toss the beans, tomatoes, onion, and warm broccoli rabe with most of the dressing. Slice the steak thinly across the grain and lay it over the top. Scrape the board, juices and all, over the meat, then add the last of the dressing.
Broccoli rabe is bitter on purpose, and salt is the control
Rabe is a brassica closer to turnip than to broccoli, and the bitterness is the whole reason to use it against rich beef. The mistake is trying to eliminate it. Blanching in properly salted water, aggressively salted, closer to seawater than to pasta water, softens the harsh edge and leaves the pleasant one. Blanching in unsalted water just makes it soggy and still bitter.
Trim the bottom inch or two of stem, which is woody and never gets better. If the stems are thicker than a pencil, split them lengthwise so they cook at the same rate as the leaves. Broccolini is milder and needs no blanching at all, just a hard sear. Escarole is a decent substitute in a different direction, bitter and tender, and goes into the pan raw.
Slicing across the grain, and why it matters more with sirloin
Find the direction the muscle fibers run and cut perpendicular to them. On a strip steak the grain is fairly obvious and forgiving. On sirloin it can shift direction across the cut, which means the correct move is sometimes to divide the steak into two pieces and slice each one along its own grain. Cutting with the grain leaves long intact fibers, and long intact fibers are what people describe as chewy steak when the steak was actually fine.
Thin slices, and a slightly angled knife so each piece has more surface for the dressing to land on. Thick slabs of beef on a salad eat like a steak that got lost.
The cherry in the dressing, and what to do without juice
Cherry and balsamic are both sweet and both sour, and the combination can slide into something syrupy fast. Unsweetened tart cherry juice is the safer of the two options because it brings acidity along with the fruit. Dried tart cherries chopped fine and softened in a tablespoon of water bring more sweetness and more body, so if you go that route, cut the honey in half and taste before adding it back.
Everything except the steak can be done ahead. The dressing keeps a week, the rabe can be blanched and squeezed a day early, and the beans, tomatoes, and onion can sit together undressed. Sear the steak last, and serve the salad within a few minutes while the warm parts are still doing their job. It does not reheat, but leftovers sliced cold into a sandwich the next day are excellent, especially if you kept a little dressing back.
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