Kick your green salad up a notch with this seared Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing. Juicy ribeye slices top a bed of salad greens tossed in a tangy and savory Japanese-style vinaigrette. It‘s so satisfying and delicious! {Gluten-free}

Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing - 12 Summer BBQ & Potluck Recipes Your Guests Would Love | Easy Japanese Recipes at JustOneCookbook.com

Summer cooking to me is all about grilling and making (relatively) light meal, and hopefully requiring less cooking time in the kitchen. Grill some delicious steak, pick up fresh greens and summer vegetables from your garden, and make this hearty and delicious salad with homemade Japanese style dressing!

Watch How To Make Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing

Click here to watch on YouTube

What You Need for Steak Salad

1. Juicy Steak

Depends on your preference and whether you’re making this dish as a side or main course, choose the cut of steak that works for you. I used ribeye because I wanted this dish to be the main meal and have plenty of protein with the salad. If you’re having a party and making a huge batch of this dish, flank steak cut into small slices can be a good alternative. You just need a few slices of steak for each serving.

I sear the steak on my cast iron grill pan to make a nice grill mark on the steak and cooked till medium rare. Wait until the pan is really hot before cooking the steak.

2. Green Salad

I found this salad mix called “Organic Asian Greens” with baby spinach, pak-choi, mizuna, komatsuna, baby kale, baby chard, baby tatsoi, baby mustard, and baby collard. I think this blend goes well with my shoyu based Japanese salad dressing, but feel free to use whatever green salad you enjoy. Green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, romaine lettuce, and most kinds of salad mix would work.

3. Colorful Vegetables

Besides the greens and steak, you can make this dish more appetizing and “special” by adding colorful ingredients. For this salad, I chose to use heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, watermelon radish, red radish, and avocado to add in additional colors. Look at the salad and imagine if I had only plated green salad with the steak on top. It’s won’t be as appetizing as the current picture, right? Playing with colors is a super easy trick to make a boring looking dish into a pretty and tasty one.

4. Shoyu Dressing

Shoyu (醤油) means soy sauce the in Japanese language. In recent years, I started to see more “shoyu” on the menu at fine dining restaurants. I am not sure why the chefs decided to use “shoyu” instead of “soy sauce” but it seems that more people are now aware of this word. So let’s call today’s soy sauce base dressing shoyu dressing to make it a bit more fancy.

The dressing itself is a variation of Japanese-style wafu dressing, which is really easy to make with typical Japanese pantry ingredients. It’s made of rice vinegar, soy sauce, oil, mirin, sugar, sesame seeds, and lemon juice.

Japanese Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing

Gluten Free Soy Sauce

Soy sauce is traditionally brewed from water, wheat, soybeans and salt. Many gluten intolerant JOC readers have told me that they can’t eat Japanese food at restaurants because they won’t be able to eat food made with regular soy sauce, unless it’s 100% wheat-free tamari soy sauce or gluten-free soy sauce.

Gluten free soy sauce in bottles.

I’ve been partnering with Kikkoman to create delicious gluten-free Japanese recipes with their gluten-free soy sauce so that everyone can enjoy Japanese foods. For this recipe, I used the regular gluten-free soy sauce (blue label) which tastes just like regular soy sauce!

If you’re gluten intolerant, check out my Gluten Free Recipes for additional recipe ideas.

Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing (gluten free) on a blue plate.

I hope this Japanese-style salad will be a great main or side dish to serve at your next get together with family and friends!

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Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing on a white plate.

Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing (gluten free) ステーキサラダ醤油ドレッシング | Easy Japanese Recipes at JustOneCookbook.com

Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing

5 from 7 votes
Kick your green salad up a notch with this seared Steak Salad with Shoyu Dressing. Juicy ribeye slices top a bed of salad greens tossed in a tangy and savory Japanese-style vinaigrette. It‘s so satisfying and delicious! {Gluten-free}

Video

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Servings: 2

Ingredients
 
 

For the Steak

  • 12–16 oz ribeye steak (you can use flank steak or any cut you like; set out at room temperature for 30 minutes)
  • ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
  • tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 Tbsp neutral oil

For the Shoyu Dressing

For the Green Salad

  • 2 handful salad mix (I used an Asian greens mix of baby kale, mizuna, pak-choi, komatsuna, and baby spinach)
  • 1 watermelon radish (thinly sliced)
  • 2 red radishes (thinly sliced)
  • ½ English cucumber (sliced)
  • ½–1 avocado (cubed; see how to cut an avocado)
  • 6 cherry tomatoes
Japanese Ingredient Substitution: If you want substitutes for Japanese condiments and ingredients, click here.

Instructions
 

  • Gather all the ingredients.
    steak salad ingredients

To Prepare the Steak

  • Let the steak sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
    Steak Salad 1
  • Pat dry a 12–16 oz ribeye steak with a paper towel. Sprinkle both sides (and the edges) generously with ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt and ⅛ tsp freshly ground black pepper.
    Steak Salad 2
  • Heat a cast-iron pan on high heat. When it‘s hot, add 1 Tbsp neutral oil. I usually apply it with a silicone brush. Sear the steak in the pan, about 3–4 minutes per side. During this time, do not move the steak around. You can use tongs to press down so the steak gets nice sear marks.
    Steak Salad 3
  • Remove the steak from the heat and let it rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes. If you cut the meat right away, all the juices will come out. Cut the steak into thin slices against the grain of the meat.
    Steak Salad 4

To Prepare the Shoyu Dressing

  • In a food processor, pureé ½ onion.
    Steak Salad 5
  • In a 1-cup measuring cup, add 4 Tbsp gluten-free soy sauce, the pureéd onion, and 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil.
    Steak Salad 6
  • Add 1½ Tbsp mirin, 1 Tbsp sugar, and 1½ Tbsp rice vinegar (unseasoned).
    Steak Salad 7
  • Add 2 Tbsp lemon juice and 2 tsp toasted white sesame seeds and whisk it all together.
    Steak Salad 8

To Assemble the Salad

  • Assemble the green salad with 2 handful salad mix (my Asian greens mix had baby kale, Asian greens, and baby spinach in it), 1 watermelon radish (thinly sliced), 2 red radishes (thinly sliced), ½ English cucumber (sliced), ½–1 avocado (cubed), and 6 cherry tomatoes. You can choose any leafy salad and other salad ingredients you like.
    Steak Salad 9
  • Place the steak slices on top and drizzle with the shoyu dressing.
    Steak Salad 9

To Store

  • You can keep the dressing and steak in separate airtight containers and store in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Nutrition

Calories: 591 kcal · Carbohydrates: 19 g · Protein: 39 g · Fat: 41 g · Saturated Fat: 16 g · Polyunsaturated Fat: 3 g · Monounsaturated Fat: 20 g · Cholesterol: 104 mg · Sodium: 766 mg · Potassium: 1253 mg · Fiber: 6 g · Sugar: 8 g · Vitamin A: 890 IU · Vitamin C: 45 mg · Calcium: 90 mg · Iron: 5 mg
Author: Namiko Hirasawa Chen
Course: Main Course, Salad
Cuisine: Japanese
Keyword: salad, steak
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Full Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Kikkoman USA. Thoughts and opinions stated are my own.

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5 from 7 votes (6 ratings without comment)
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Can’t wait to make this with our hot weather this week. A nearby Japanese restaurant top a similar salad with scallop sashimi. Thank you so much and happy Memorial Day 😃5 stars

I just tried the STEAK SALAD WITH SHOYU DRESSING and it was terrific. I made the dressing yesterday and left it in the refrigerator overnight. I think that really helped the flavors to develop. I didn’t have ribeye because it wasn’t on sale at my favorite grocery, so I used top sirloin filets. My family liked this recipe very much. We will be having this again soon.

If I don’t have a food processor, can I just grate the onion?

Hi Nami,
I experimented on this with miso marinated skirt steak..no dressing…It turned out great! What is great about your recipes is the variety of ways to play with the base recipe.

Alyx

Last night, I was preparing a salad for our dinner and wanted a different non-routine dressing. Namico’s Shoyu Dressing came to my mind. I made it and poured it on my salad. I am glad I made it and everyone ate the salad and complemented me. The dressing is easy to make – doesn’t take 5 minutes – and yet the taste is very good.

Namico, thank you for coming to my rescue last night.

FYI, after trying your Miso Salad Dressing, I have never used a store-bought this dressing. And again, thank you for the miso dressing.

You steak looks perfectly cooked Nami. Yum!!!

This time of year we do a lot of salads like this. Whenever Bobby grills steak, he grills 2 and then we split one right off the grill and save the other for a steak salad. Have never used an Asian dressing but that can change Love your Shoyu dressing and the radish and other ingredients for your salad. Thanks Nami! Hope things are going well.

I have friends who can’t tolerate gluten, so lately I’ve been buying only GF soy sauce. The flavor seems just the same to me! Anyway, what a nice dish — I’ll never say no to steak! Thanks for the comment.

this sounds yummy! am going to make it tonight let you know how i did later!
Thanks so much for your recipes.

That….looks….wonderful. You have a gorgeous and tasty site. I have tried many of your recipes and love them all. Great photos and videos, too!.
Arigato for all the time you spend on this!

Thank you Nami for all your wonderful recipes and beautiful photos. I really enjoy your blog and love to try your dishes. Have a great time in Japan. I wish to go there someday and see all the beauty firsthand.