Warm, tender steak slices rest on a bed of crunchy lettuce topped with creamy avocado, bright red onion, juicy mango slices, and some sweet, crunchy caramelized macadamia nuts. It’s all drizzled with a sweet and savory dressing you might want to drink from a glass. This Steak and Mango Salad is truly restaurant quality! One of our ALL time favorites, here on Our Best Bites.
Step 1: Prepare Flank Steak
One thing that simplifies this Steak and Mango Salad is that you’ll make one dressing and you’ll pour part of it over your meat for a marinade, and save the rest for your salad dressing! After marinading the meat, cook it on the grill, or in the oven.
Step 2: Prepare Salad Ingredients
While steak is cooking and resting, prepare lettuce and slice mango, onion, and avocado.
Step 3: Assemble Salad
Place steak over lettuce with mango, avocado, and red onion. Sprinkle with candied macadamia nuts and cilantro and then drizzle with reserved dressing.
Makes 4-6 large dinner salads or 6-8 smaller side salads
Steak and Mango Salad
Description
An amazing combination of sweet and savory. Tender flank steak, mangos, avocado, red onion and crunchy caramelized macadamia nuts.
Ingredients
1-ish pound flank steak
1 head romaine or red-leaf lettuce
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 mangoes, sliced
1 large, or 2 small avocados sliced
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro
1/2 cup macadamia nuts, caramelized (Click here for instructions, can make a day ahead)
Dressing & Marinade
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
6 tablespoons fresh lime juice
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh grated ginger
4 cloves garlic, pressed or finely minced
3/4 cup canola oil
Instructions
In a bowl, whisk together the orange juice, lime juice, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, and garlic. Whisk until sugar is dissolved. Continue whisking while slowly drizzling in the oils until combined. Alternately, you could vigorously shake all the ingredients together in a mason jar.
Reserve about 3/4 cup of this mixture for the salad dressing and place the rest of the mixture in a zip-lock bag.
Lightly score the flank steak in a diagonal pattern on both sides. Place steak in the zip-lock bag with marinade and leave in fridge for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.
Remove steak from fridge about 30 minutes prior to cooking and leave at room temperature. Heat outdoor grill to med-high heat. If an outdoor grill is not available, use the broiler, or an indoor grill pan. Remove steak from bag and let excess marinade drip off. Sprinkle steak lightly with salt and pepper. Cook for about 5-8 minutes on each side or until it reaches an internal temperature of about 135 for medium rare. (In order to stay tender, flank steak should still be pink in the middle, but nicely seared on the outside.) When done, remove from grill and wait at least 5 minutes before cutting to let the juices redistribute. While steak is cooking and resting, prepare other salad ingredients.
Divide lettuce onto plates or bowls and top with slices of mango, avocado, and red onion.
Slice steak into thin strips against the grain and add to salads. Sprinkle macadamia nuts and cilantro on top and then drizzle with reserved dressing (make sure to shake well before pouring.)
Questions & Reviews
This is my all time favorite salad. I could eat it everyday. My favorite version is with the steak but it works well with chicken too. I chunk everything because I think it is easier to eat. And I normally caramelize cashews because I always have those around. The dressing is to die for, I love soaking up the extra on my plate with some good artisan bread. Thanks for the delicious recipe!
I made this for dinner tonight. It was AWESOME.
I made this again last night. To-die-for. My daughter loves cilantro as much as I hate it. I bought some for her to put on her own salad, but she had to sit on the other side of the table from me while we ate so I wouldn’t have to smell it. The good thing about this salad is that each plate can be individualized! And the meat- oh, the meat. So, so, so good. Okay, I think I’ve said enough.
Oh… and we dressed ours in homemade cilantro ranch dressing. I would recommend trying it like that!
Had a few mangoes to use that came in my BOUNTIFUL BASKET. Glad I found this recipe! It was AMAZING! I swear anything would taste good in this marinade. My steak marinaded aout 12 hours-AWESOME! This will be a regular around our home! Except maybe without the mango… I don’t think I like mangoes much… 🙁
This salad is SO darn good, I could eat it every day! Thanks!
This salad looks so good! I’m going to try it with some red peppers. I just can’t decide if I want them crunchy and raw or roasted. Yum!
So surprised to find mangoes and avocados go together. And they do. Deliciously. Thanks
Yummy!
This salad is delious!
delicious:)
This looks delicious! You could even make a finer chop and use as filling for tacos! Can’t wait for the market to open tomorrow morning….going to make these for lunch! You rock!
Finally, my loves of mango, steak, and avocado meet on one plate. This makes for a seriously indulgent packed lunch. I included in a roundup of lunch ideas in Poor Taste magazine. http://www.poortastemag.com/
This salad sounds so good! Unfortunetly, like Sara and sea food I have a really strong gag reflex when it comes to onion. Just the slightest hint of them makes me wretch. I always just leave them out, but this salad might be lonely with just steak and mango. (oh yeah, cant do avacado either…although I think I might have to give it another try. I make a habbit of trying things over and over just incase my taste buds changed) So the questions is can you think of other things to add to this salad to make it full again?
You should try adding sweet corn, roasted red peppers and maybe even some cucumbers. Or maybe grilled pineapple. The possibilities are endless. Salad recipes are good, but I always use them more as a template for my own creativity.
If you don’t like onions you should try using shallots. Shallots taste somewhat like an onion, but they have a sweeter, milder, and yet richer flavor. You could just mince one up and add like a 1/4 teaspoon of it to the dressing. Shallots look like they would be a great addition to this dressing, I’m going to try it myself.
I made this for dinner tonight and it was awesome…the combination of flavors was perfect! It’s definitely a keeper!
made this for dinner last night, it was great. as my husband said, “this is a keeper!”
I didn’t know I had such power in my wishing! Thanks so much for the step-by-steps on the nuts. We’ll give those nuts another go (and it’s nice to know I’m not the only one that had issues with this).
Patti- caramelizing plain sugar can be a bit tricky because there are lots of variables that can mess it up! Kate and I even had issues with the ones we made for the class.
I came up with a way I think is much easier, and I just wrote a tutorial about it (your wish is our command!)and posted it right after the steak salad post. It has step-by-step photos as well. That should help!
Yum, my mouth is watering now, lol. Looks Delicious!!
After trying this salad at your shindig on Thursday night, we made this for dinner last night to rave reviews! Thanks.
We did have one problem with it though…what did I do wrong? We had a problem with caramelizing the nuts. Can you clarify how to do this the RIGHT way?
I wish I would have read this before I went and blew this week’s food budget this morning!! I’ll definitely be trying this next week.
WOW. This looks sooo yummy. I am making it this week for sure.
This was SO. GOOD.
hands down best salad ever!
This looks way yummy, and I don’t even LIKE steak! But I do love mangos. I’ve got a killer mango salsa recipe that everyone drools over if you’re interested (and have a whole to fill for mango week).
I am so sad I couldn’t make it on Thursday night. My hubby had a meeting that I didn’t know about until last minute and I couldn’t find a babysitter fast enough! I was disappointed, to say the least.
I wanted to let you know that I passed on your French Dip recipe to a bunch of friends after serving it at a party, and all of their husbands are now in love with it. Thanks a bunch, ladies!
Mmmmmm this looks AMAZING!!!! I am definitely going to be trying it in the near future!