Bomb Baby Spinach & Strawberry Ground Beef Salad
My dad and I really don’t like salads or most vegetables. That being said, please understand the weight of the statement I am about to make… we both liked this salad.
My father was brainstorming different ways that our customers could use our grind. After all, ground beef is one of, if not the most versatile, forms of beef out there. With our different textures of grind, the number of dishes that can be created with ground beef grows exponentially. Understandably, though, many of our customers seem to be stuck on the mindset of burgers, meatballs, red sauce, and possibly stroganoff.
So, while on the phone with a childhood friend who lives in California named Tim, it was mentioned in passing that he loves our ground beef and that he cooks a bunch of it and puts it on a salad to eat throughout the week. Hell yeah, Tim—that’s another fantastic way for our customers to enjoy our ground beef! One problem, though: Dad and I don’t like salads. How on earth are we supposed to sincerely suggest to someone how to make a bomb burger salad when we are not sold on the idea ourselves?
So after some time contemplating, my dad came up with the creative idea of a baby spinach and strawberry salad with a homemade (super simple) vinaigrette dressing. Let me tell you all about it below.
Ingredients
Baby spinach
Strawberries
Pasta of your choice
Dressing Ingredients
1/3 cup olive oil
1 oz balsamic vinegar
A couple of pinches of salt
About 1/3 of a lemon's worth of lemon juice
Instructions
First, you’re going to want to be picky about these baby spinach leaves; no wilted ones will do. They need to be crisp, bright, and full of life to be up to snuff for tonight’s salad.
Same story with these strawberries—only the best, or the best you can find. Well, as long as you're happy with them, that’s what counts.
Cut about a dozen of them into small pieces. (We just halved the strawberry then cut the halves into small pieces)
Pro tip: when you’re eating this salad, you can use the strawberry as a backboard to pierce the spinach leaf so it stays on your fork better, so keep that in mind when deciding strawberry piece size.
The dressing? Wow, it takes the cake and is easy to make. Listen to these simple guidelines below (and tweak the proportions as you must to put your own fun spin on it):
Dressing instructions/ingredients:
1/3 cup olive oil
One ounce balsamic vinegar
A couple of pinches of salt
About 1/3 of a lemon's worth of lemon juice
Whisk it together—that’s it!
For the Beef:
Cook the desired amount of Palouse River Premium Ground Beef in a pan on medium to high heat.
As it is cooking, using a wooden spoon or spatula, break the ground beef into small bite-sized pieces that will later be set next to the salad when the dish is plated, or on top of it!
Now, I would like to reiterate that these are very rough measurements. You may need to make more to accommodate a larger salad than the small one my dad made, or mess around with the amount of each ingredient to put your own spin on it!
With this salad, we cooked up about a quarter pound of fine-ground beef to serve next to it. I did eat the ground beef with the salad in a combined bite and was shocked that everything went together nicely. The flavors were vastly different, however, complementary to each other. Depending on your personal preference for grind texture, this dish could also be fantastic with medium or even coarse-textured ground beef—each adding a very different spin on the texture of each bite.
We also served it with butter noodles, a super simple side to give us more mass on the plate. We decided on noodles with simple herbs and butter so that they would not compete with the bold flavors of the beef and salad. The noodles rather played an accompanying role in the meal, allowing the beef salad to take center stage.
If you cook this up, please reach out and let us know what you think and what alterations you may have made—or think we would enjoy trying!
—Ryley Griffiths