QUICK and EASY steak salad with a light miso vinaigrette. Ready in 30 minutes, or make-ahead for an even quicker weekday meal. Gluten-free.

Photography Credit: Sabrina Modelle

I come from California, the land of salad for dinner. You can’t ask for a much simpler homemade meal (I mean, unless cereal counts).

With this easy and delicious steak salad, pan-seared skirt steak sits atop a bed of spring greens, carrots, radishes, and apples. The miso vinaigrette- tangy, sweet, substantial, and full of umami, provides another layer of wow.

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You may only know miso from its ubiquitous appearance as a soup at your favorite sushi joint, but miso is so much more!

Miso is a thick fermented paste made from a combination of legumes and grains – it can take over a year to make! Miso can range in color and flavor from dark-hued and super funky to light, buttery, and almost sweet. It can provide amazing depth of flavor to all sorts of dishes, and in the case of this dressing, it also acts as a thickener – which means less need for oil!

One of the things I love about this skirt steak salad is that it’s so incredibly quick to make. If I’m feeling organized, I prep and cook the individual ingredients on Sunday so I can toss together quick meals all week long, but you can also easily make the recipe, start to finish, in 30 minutes.

I chose apples, carrots, and radishes to round out this salad because I always have them on hand and because they pair so well with miso.

You can get creative, though, and try this salad with seasonal fruits and veggies of your choice. Miso also pairs particularly well with corn, mushrooms, beets, citrus, eggplant, and pineapple. Come to think of it, that sounds like a pretty fantastic salad, too.

California is having one of its wettest years on record, so I have yet to pull out the grill, but I’m not going to let the weather stand in the way of delicious steak.

Instead, I pull out my cast iron skillet or grill pan to cook a steak with a nice crust and juicy interior. You’ll need to open the windows and turn your hood fan onto high while you heat the pan and during the cooking – searing steak can create a lot of smoke! It also helps to leave your steak on the counter for about 30 minutes to take some of the chill off.