Your Bloody Mary is Now a Salad (Thank Me Later)

Your favorite brunch cocktail, now in (steak) salad form.

Meat and Bloody Marys have met before—with bacon as garnish or meat stick as straw. And then there was the mic-drop moment when a Bloody Mary was garnished with a whole fried chicken. 

I wouldn’t call it a Genius recipe, and I don’t desire to try it—and I don’t even really want to learn about it on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives"—but sticking a chicken on a Bloody did make me think that a meat dish with traditional Bloody ingredients and garnishes sounded kind of good.

Thank you Sara Dickerman for thinking it, too, and for making a steak salad with Bloody Mary ingredients. I took your inspiration, but whammied the whole thing: Bloody Marys and their garnishes are not tame specimens—or, rather, they shouldn’t be (as we learned during our taste test with Hugh Acheson).

So a salad rendition needs to follow suit: I added all the garnishes I’d want to balance atop my glass; you can edit or add as you desire. I wanted these confident ingredients (pickles, olives, horseradish, hot sauce, and others) to punch the steak instead of shimmy around it, so I used a technique I learned from Merav where the skirt steak gets grilled naked and then seasoned after the fact whilst sitting in marinade for half an hour.

The result is a salad that isn’t shy by any means—it’s flavorful at room temp but also welcome warmed at brunch with some eggs in a steak and eggs sort of situation. And sure, serve it with a Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary Steak Salad

Serves 4 as a main

1 1/2 
pounds skirt steak (or hanger steak)

1
 tablespoon Sherry vinegar

1 
tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Juice from 1 lemon

2 
tablespoons prepared horseradish

1 
tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 
teaspoons hot sauce

1/4 
cup chopped briny green olives, plus 2 tablespoons olive brine, divided

1/2 
red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 
cup celery half-moons, plus some leaves if you'd like

2 
tablespoons pickled jalapeños

1 
pint cherry tomatoes, halved

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 
cup crumbled blue cheese

1/2 
cup parsley leaves


See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photo by Bobbi Lin