Beef with daikon and ponzu dressing

When sautéed beef slices are dressed with grated daikon (white radish) and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) dressing, they become a rather light meal instead of a rich and heavy beef dish. Beef with Daikon and Ponzu Dressing is so quick to make.

I realised that there aren’t as many beef dishes as other meat dishes in my recipe list. So I decided to post a dish using beef. And it so happened that in last week’s post, Daikon Takikomi Gohan (Rice with White Radish), I said I was hoping to introduce more daikon recipes. So, it was a no-brainer for me to post this dish.

Finely grated daikon is called “daikon oroshi” (大根おろし) in Japanese. I must say that whenever you add daikon oroshi to a dish, it becomes lighter and more refreshing. And per my post last week, daikon oroshi contains a lot of enzymes, which helps digestion.

I have a wonderful grater which lets you grate root vegetables finely. It is a ceramic grater by Kyocera. You can visit my post, Steamed Lotus Root Balls to see what it looks like. You can buy this from Amazon or other online shopping stores. Search on ‘Kyocera ceramic grater’. They have a small grater for ginger (model CY-10) and a medium size grater for root vegetables (model CD-18) which I used to grate daikon.

Sautéed beef can be fatty and heavy, especially if you use marbled wagyu beef (beef with fat scattered in the red meat tissue). Since Japanese dishes are plain and light in general, I think that someone must have thought of this dish with daikon oroshi to make the beef less greasy, and lighter to suit the Japanese palette. The addition of citrus flavoured ponzu makes it more refreshing.

When using pork or beef in Japanese cooking we often use thinly sliced meat, which is hardly existent in the Western cuisine. I read in an article on the net that the reason why the Japanese use sliced meat in their cooking is because they use chopsticks to eat instead of a knife and fork. To come to think of it, you can’t eat a steak with chopsticks unless it’s already sliced.

When I first got a job in Sydney at a life insurance company in the early 1980s, one of my colleagues was a young Aussie who told me that I was the first Japanese person he had ever spoken to. He was very curious about Japanese culture and he talked about chopsticks, how hard it was for him to use them. Then he asked me, “how do you eat a steak with chopsticks?”

It was such an innocent question and I had to smile. I said to him that a knife and fork would be supplied unless the steak was already cut into bite size pieces. That’s exactly the reason why Japanese use sliced meat a lot and the butchers in Japan sell more sliced meats than steaks or blocks.

Today’s recipe also uses thinly sliced beef. I bought a pack of sliced beef for Sukiyaki. If each slice is quite large, cut it into 2-3 pieces so that it is easier to pick up and eat. The beef slices are sautéed with a little bit of oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Because each slice is so thin, you only need to cook it for 30 seconds on each side.

If you are cooking for just two people, you should be able to cook all the meat in the fry pan at once. Plate the cooked beef, top with plenty of daikon oroshi and pour ponzu dressing over it. If you have some home-made ponzu, per my recipe Japanese Dressings, that would be wonderful. Instead, you can buy a bottle of ponzu dressing at Asian/Japanese grocery stores.

If you cannot find thinly sliced beef, you can slice the meat yourself. In my post, Beef Rolls with Asparagus, I explained how to slice a block of beef thinly. If you cannot slice very thinly, it doesn’t matter. You can either pound the slice to make it thinner or cook the thicker slices. But if the meat is thicker, you will need to cook the meat a bit longer.

If you prefer, you can cook a steak instead. The daikon oroshi and ponzu might not coat the steak as well as the thinly sliced beef. But it should still make the steak lighter and you will end up with a beef steak Japanese style.

Yumiko

5 from 2 votes

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Beef with Daikon and Ponzu Dressing

Prep Time

5 mins

Cook Time

5 mins

Total Time

10 mins

 

When sautéed beef slices are dressed with grated daikon (white radish) and ponzu (citrus soy sauce) dressing, they become a rather light meal instead of a rich and heavy beef dish. Beef with Grated Daikon and Ponzu Dressing is so quick to make.

Prep Time assumes that sliced meat is purchased and ponzu is already made.

Recipe Type: Main

Cuisine: Japanese

Serves: 2

Ingredients (tbsp=15ml, cup=250ml)

• 300 g (0.7lb) thinly sliced beef (note 1). Cut into large bite size pieces if too large
• 1-2 tsp oil (note 2)
• 1 cup finely grated daikon (white radish)
• 2 tbsp ponzu (note 3)

Serving

• Boiled broccoli
• Tomatoes

Instructions

1. Add oil to a fry pan over medium high heat.

2. Place beef slices on the fry pan ensuring that each slice is not folded or overlapped. Sauté for 30 seconds on each side then transfer to plate.

3. Place the beef on serving plates with broccoli and tomatoes on the side, top with daikon.

4. Pour ponzu over the grated daikon or serve beef with ponzu separately for individuals to pour over the daikon.

Recipe Notes

1. I did not use marbled wagyu beef (beef with fat scattered in the red meat tissue) but it would be the best if you can get it because the good amount of fat in the beef slices goes well with daikon oroshi. Beef tenderloin, sirloin, strip loin, or rib-eye slices are suitable for this dish.

The thickness of the sliced beef should be about 2-3mm (1/16 - ⅛") which is suitable for sukiyaki. Shabu-shabu slices are thinner than sukiyaki slices. They would be too thin and the meat breaks easily when sautéed.

You can buy thinly sliced beef at Asian/Japanese grocery stores. They are sold frozen. You might also find sliced beef at Korean butchers.

If you cannot buy thinly sliced beef, you can make slices from a block of beef. Please refer to my post, Beef Rolls with Asparagus where I explain how to make thinly sliced beef.

2. If you are using marbled wagyu beef slices, you need only one teaspoon oil, but if your beef is red meat with not much fat in it, you need more oil.

3. Ponzu is a citrus flavoured soy sauce dressing. Please refer to my post, Japanese Dressings, which explains how to make ponzu. 

You can also buy a bottle of ponzu dressing at Asian/Japanese grocery stores.