Last week was Sabbath week at my church, which includes spending quality time with peers. One of the ways quality peer time manifested was through a peer potluck. I wanted to make something from The Food Lab, since I haven’t made anything from that book in awhile and settled on thai flank steak salad. I also wanted to make something that can count as both a protein and a vegetable dish. From previous potlucks I’ve been at, it always seems that there is a demand for vegetables.

I was proven to be correct when one of my peers later sent out a text message asking if anyone was making vegetables.

I found the recipe in my book but it can also be found here on SeriousEats as well too. It was pretty simple putting it together and was very hands off in terms of prep. The marinade alone makes this recipe.

So anyway, I ended up subbing out the beansprouts for spring mix instead. I also realize that meat is really expensive.

Like, real expensive, y’all.

At first, I was looking for a flank steak and balked at the price when I realized that it was around $14-15 per pound. I needed something around 2 lbs. As an alternative, I ended up going with a tri-tip roast instead at $12 per pound because I would like to not break bank. I was surprised that the tri-tip was cheaper.

To my knowledge up to that point, I always thought of tri-tip as a “bougie cut” of meat. Like, it was a big deal if someone was serving tri-tip. I remember back in my freshman year, my college roommate would routinely check the dining halls’ weekly menu to figure out which place would be serving tri-tip. Sometimes, it would be a floor bonding activity to go out to whichever dining hall was serving tri-tip that night for dinner.

Cal is known for many things, which unfortunately includes bad dining hall food. It could be that this tri-tip roast was just one of the rare things that Cal did well…or it just tasted great because everything else tasted terrible. Who knows?

Tangential story aside, none of this actually explained to me of what tri-tip actually was. Why all the hype for this cut, rather than other cuts of meat?

Which, of course, then inspired me to ask the question: what is the difference between a flank steak and a tri-tip?

Here I go, answering a question that no one asked.

Flank Steak vs Tri-Tip: What’s the Difference?

You ever blindly bought a cut of meat based on a recipe or wondered why there were so many parts of beef or what could be used to substitute when you can’t find a certain cut or the cut you’re looking for was too expensive? Because I thought that.

A quick jump into the Google rabbit hole brought up this post, which was pretty helpful.

Because I like my charts and diagrams, here is some information breaking that down.

Theoretically, the tri-tip roast, which is located above the flank, should be more tender and contain more fat.

Yeah, that’s also something that I learned. A tri-tip roast has two different grain directions because why not.

Anyway, so it’s a fun piece of meat to cut when you’re called to cut along the grain.

Making of the Salad

As I mentioned earlier, this salad was pretty simple to put together. The first part was the making of the marinade–a simple blend of fish sauce, soy sauce, some brown sugar dissolved in boiling water, garlic, lime juice, pepper flakes and oil. Again, this marinade is really good, like really good.

Anyway, I then let the tri-tip roast marinate in this sauce in the fridge overnight. I also then realized that I accidentally mixed in the vegetable oil with the marinade before partitioning the marinade into two halves. I should have taken half of the marinade then add the oil to use to marinate the meat.

Welp, had no other choice but to proceed.

So, another reason that I was excited for this dish was that it gave me a good excuse to use this meat thermometer that I impulse bought out of anger from the prime rib incident. I refused to overcook meat again. I decided to do a reverse-sear method and cook this meat at 250F until it reached 125F (which should be around medium rare).

After about 30-35 minutes or so, it reached the target temperature. I then pan fried the steak with the marinade leftover in the ziploc bag until it got a sort of charred crust before letting it rest for ten minutes. Gotta let those juices settle.

In the mean time, I cut up some basil and mint and sliced up a cucumber and some shallots before mixing in the spring mix to sub in beansprouts.

Back to the meat, I got into the cutting the meat, first cutting it in half where the grain changed, then got to thinly slicing the meat. Immediately, my first thought was, “oh, this is rare.” Like really rare.

So it looks a lil raw. But at least, it wasn’t overcooked. After some thought of wondering if I should try cooking it more (then actually trying to), I figured that if people were not comfortable, they could just cook their meat more via microwave.

Also I was running late to the potluck. I didn’t have much of a choice.

You can make your meat more done, but you cannot make it more rare.

So this is the final product after slicing the meat and laying it on top of the salad. Not much for presentation but it smelled good at least. It was also at this point where I realize that I forgot to add the shallots. Oh well.

So this salad ended up tasting pretty great, mostly because of the marinade. It was a hit at my peer potluck. The meat was a bit chewy, so I would definitely try to cut these pieces smaller next time. I like the tangy notes from the lime and the umami kick from the fish sauce in the dressing. The cucumbers offered a nice cooling contrast to the spiciness of it as well.

Overall, I liked this salad and think that this would be a nice staple recipe to perfect, maybe with other proteins like shrimp or tofu. So much so that I ended up making it for team meeting potluck the next week with the leftover herbs. That time, I learned and set the cook temperature to 135F, instead of 125F. The meat was a little bit more on the well-done side but it looked less rare. I also remembered to add the shallots in this time.

…

Don’t add shallots to this.