Ree Drummond’s Steak Salad Is ‘Worth Every Second’ of Prep
Get a restaurant-style salad at home with Ree Drummond’s Big Steak Salad. The Pioneer Woman salad recipe is far from the average plate of greens. After all, it’s the cookbook author’s version of a restaurant favorite.
Ree Drummond loves steak salad
Similar to tiramisu or lasagna, steak salad is a dish that gets a lot of love from the Pioneer Woman.
“There’s not much better to me than a delicious salad with sliced steak over the top,” she said in an October 2020 Pioneer Woman blog post. “This is a take on a restaurant favorite. Lots of steps, but worth every second. Great for company!”
Featured on not one but two episodes of The Pioneer Woman, “Alex’s 16th Birthday” and “Dear Pioneer Woman,” Drummond’s steak salad is her answer to cure steak and potato boredom.
“A lot of people say, you know, I love steak but I don’t want to eat steak and potatoes every night,” she remarked from the Lodge where The Pioneer Woman’s filmed. “I always direct them to the big steak salad. It’s one of my favorite beef recipes.”
She continued, describing it as “pretty much a huge salad with a big, juicy steak on top.”
“Then another thing on top — and I’ll wait before I tell you about that — it’s a pretty decadent dish,” she added, hinting at what would later be revealed as homemade onion rings.
Drummond’s steak salad features an Asian-inspired marinade that pulls double duty as dressing
Drummond’s Big Steak Salad includes a marinade-dressing combination with a pretty long ingredient list. The Super Easy cookbook author uses 12 ingredients, according to Food Network, to make what she refers to as an “Asian-influenced marinade” that doubles as dressing.
Drummond prepared the marinade on The Pioneer Woman. She started by putting canola oil, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and lime juice — for “some zip” — in a canning jar. Then in went additional ingredients including sugar “for a hint of sweetness,” garlic, minced fresh ginger, chili oil, salt, and pepper.
“Believe me, it’s good,” she said as she shook the jar.
Half went in a resealable plastic bag with the rib-eye steaks. The rest Drummond put to the side, saying, “the great news about this is it doubles as the salad dressing so I’ll save that for later.”
Onion rings go on top of the Pioneer Woman’s Big Steak Salad
Drummond’s steak salad gets some crunch courtesy of homemade onion rings. “One of the best parts about this salad is I top the whole thing with thin, fried onion rings,” she said on her cooking show. Explaining how to prepare them, Drummond poured buttermilk over thinly sliced onions. “It’s just going to moisten them up, take a little bit of the pungent onion flavor away,” she said.
Then she tossed together flour, “a good amount of salt,” cayenne pepper, and black pepper to make the “dry mixture.” After stirring the onions around in the buttermilk she dipped some in the dry mixture, being sure to tap off the excess.
Then she dropped them into a pot of hot oil. “These are going to be golden and crisp and out of this world,” she said. Drummond continued frying the onion rings in batches “so they cook really evenly.”
When the steaks were done grilling the Food Network star assembled the salad. She put a layer of greens on a plate followed by slices of steak and, finally, onion rings.
