Vietnamese Beef Salad

Salad is anything but boring with this refreshing and tasty vermicelli noodle dish, it’s filling without weighing you down.

Serves 4

500g sirloin steak

2 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

¾ cup white wine vinegar

¼ cup caster sugar

1 long red chilli, deseeded, finely chopped

150g thin vermicelli rice noodles

1 large carrot, peeled, finely shredded

2 Lebanese cucumbers, thinly sliced

1 cup mint leaves

fried shallots, to serve

1 Place steak into a glass bowl. Add 1 tbsp fish sauce, oil and half the garlic. Toss until well combined. Cover and marinate for 1 hour. Combine vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to the boil. Transfer to a bowl. Cool. Add remaining fish sauce, garlic and half the chilli.

2 Place noodles into a heatproof bowl. Cover with boiling water and stand for 5 minutes or until soft and transparent. Drain.

3 Heat a non-stick frying pan, chargrill or barbecue hot plate over a high heat. When hot, add steaks and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side or until medium rare. Transfer to chopping board. Cover and stand for 10 minutes. Diagonally slice.

4 Place beef, noodles, carrot, cucumber and mint leaves on serving plates. Drizzle with dressing and serve sprinkled with remaining chilli and shallots on the side.