Nam tok neua (น้ำตกเนื้อ), which directly translates to Thai waterfall beef or beef waterfall, is actually more of a grilled beef or steak salad. The dish can be made with either beef or pork, and it’s common to find either version in Thailand, but I wanted to make this recipe with beef this time. If you have a nice chunk of beef or some steak and you want make a delicious Thai dish, nam tok neua (น้ำตกเนื้อ) is a wonderful choice. The dish is a northeastern Thai dish, found throughout Thailand now, but traditionally eaten in Isaan.
Here are the ingredients you’ll need for this recipe:
First, for the beef marinade, here’s what you’ll need:
500 grams of beef (of you could also use pork, I used a tenderloin type of cut, but any cut of beef will work)
1 tbsp ground black pepper (you can either grind it yourself or use pre-ground black pepper)
1.5 tbsp light soy sauce
Even though I grilled 500 grams of beef, for this Thai beef salad I just made a single plate, so these ingredients go with just ½ of the beef – 250 grams, so if you make all the beef from above, you’ll have to double these ingredients:
250 grams of beef – grilled and sliced
1 tbsp khao khua (here’s the recipe: http://www.eatingthaifood.com/2015/04/toasted-rice-powder-recipe/)
2 tbsp fish sauce
tiny bit of sugar (this is optional)
1 – 2 tbsp chili flakes (depending on how spicy you want it)
1.5 tbsp lime juice – I used the juice from 2 limes
5 small shallots – sliced
1 green onion – diced
handful mint leaves to garnish
The first step is the marinate the beef. All you have to do is add the soy sauce and the black pepper to a mixing bowl along with the beef, and mix it thoroughly until the beef is fully cooked. I marinated the beef for about 1 hour, but really, if you don’t have the time to marinate it for longer, just go ahead and grill it immediately. The marinate is not all that flavorful, the main dressing of the salad is what gives the nam tok beef salad most of its delicious taste. Then grill the beef. The reason nam tok neua (น้ำตกเนื้อ) is called Thai waterfall beef salad is because, as the legend says, the beef makes a hissing sound (from the sizzling on the grill), when the meat is done and ready to be taken off the grill. I’m not sure if this is really how this Thai food got its name, but it sounds like a pretty good story to me, and I think it’s pretty good.
You want to grill your meat until it’s about medium cooked, and once finished, set it aside to rest.
Then, proceed to slice the beef steak into bite sized strips, and put it back into a mixing bowl. Mix in all the remaining ingredients, and stir gently, but make sure all the ingredients are coating the slices of beef. You should then taste test to make sure your beef salad is nice and tasty – it should be salty, sour, and spicy. Once you have the correct balance of ingredients, put the nam tok neua (น้ำตกเนื้อ) onto a plate, and garnish with a few more mint leaves on top.
This Thai beef salad recipe is pretty easy to make, and it tastes extremely good. Hope you can try this recipe, and let me know how it goes!
Here’s the full recipe: http://www.eatingthaifood.com/2015/04/nam-tok-recipe/ (Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!)
Music in this video courtesy of Audio Network
This video was produced by Mark Wiens and Ying Wiens in Bangkok, Thailand: http://migrationology.com/blog & http://www.eatingthaifood.com/
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Thank you for watching!