Four bean salad with steak strips and avocado
Serves 2-3
I love this recipe because it’s quick and easy and very filling! And it can be served both warm and cold which means you can make it in advance.
INGREDIENTS
Salad:
- 400g steak strips
- 1 can of red kidney beans
- 1 can of butter beans
- 1 can of cannellini beans
- 250g of green beans
- 1 red onion
- 1 ripe large avocado
Dressing:
- Salt & pepper
- Olive oil
- Balsamic vinegar
- Dried basil
METHOD
- Fry the beef strips to your liking (I like mine medium rare) in a pan with some olive oil, salt & pepper. When done, take it off the cooker and let it rest.
- Boil the kettle and pour the hot water into a smallish saucepan. Add the green beans to the saucepan – but no need to boil them! All you want is to blanch them so they go warm but remain crispy. (Alternatively you could quickly steam them for a couple of minutes.) Drain the beans after about 4 minutes and put them in a large bowl.
- Peel the onion, half it, and thinly slice up but halves – then add them to the bowl.
- Open the three cans of beans, make sure you put them in a colander and rinse them properly under cold water before adding them all to the large bowl. Try to get as much water and “bean juice” off them as possible before adding them to the bowl.
- Peel the avocado by cutting it in half, discarding the middle, then cut the halves in half. That makes it easer to peel off the skin by hand. Once youve peeled it, cut the avocado in equal sized chunks.
- Tip the beef strips straight into the bowl with all the lovely juices and oil.
- Add salt, pepper, dried basil and balsamic vinegar to the bowl, plus a tiny splash of more olive oil if the beef strips didn’t produce enough “juice”.
- Mix it all and it is ready to serve.
This should feed around 3-4 people but works great as a leftover for lunch the next day too.
You can use whatever type of canned beans you want really, so no need to stick to the ones I used.
Also, if you can’t find beef strips, I usually buy cheap braising beef or whatever beef that is on offer and cut them in equal sized strips/chunks – works just as good!