Quick answer: This steak salad has 45 grams of protein and 9 grams of net carbs per serving, at 450 calories. Seared flank steak sliced over peppery arugula with blue cheese and a sharp red wine vinaigrette. Thirty minutes including a mandatory ten-minute rest, serves 2.
Almost everything that goes wrong with a steak salad happens in the sixty seconds after the steak leaves the pan. Cut it too early and the juice ends up on the board, the meat goes dry, and the leaves underneath turn to soup. That’s the whole difficulty, and it’s covered in detail below.
Get it right and this is one of the more impressive things you can put on a plate in half an hour. It’s also the second-lowest in carbohydrate in the high protein salad collection, behind only the turkey cobb.
Why This Salad Has 45 Grams of Protein
| Source | Per serving |
|---|---|
| Flank steak, cooked (110 g) | 33.7 g |
| Blue cheese (30 g) | 6.4 g |
| Arugula (125 g) | 3.3 g |
| Tomatoes and onion | 1.2 g |
| Total | 44.6 g |
Lean flank steak runs about 30 grams of protein per 100 g cooked, which is among the highest of any ingredient in this collection. A 110-gram cooked portion — roughly 150 grams raw — does three-quarters of the work on its own.
What’s worth noticing is the arugula. At 125 grams per serving it contributes 3.3 grams, more than the tomatoes and onion combined. Leaves rarely matter nutritionally, but at this volume they start to.
The Rest Is Not Optional
This is the technique the recipe depends on, and it’s where most steak salads fail.
What happens in the pan: heat causes the muscle fibers to contract, squeezing moisture out of the fibers and toward the center of the steak, where it collects under pressure. A steak straight off the heat is a piece of meat with its juice concentrated in the middle and its fibers still tight.
What happens during the rest: as the temperature evens out, the fibers relax and reabsorb that moisture, redistributing it through the whole cut. Ten minutes is enough for a flank steak.
What happens if you skip it: you cut into pressurized fibers and the juice runs out onto the board. You lose it entirely — it doesn’t go back in — and what’s left is drier meat. On a salad it’s worse than on a plate, because that liquid then soaks into the leaves.
Then slice against the grain. Flank steak has long, visible muscle fibers running in one direction. Cut parallel to them and every bite is a mouthful of long fibers to chew through. Cut across them, at roughly 90 degrees, and each slice is those same fibers cut short. On flank steak specifically, this matters more than the doneness.
What You Need
Serves 2.
For the salad
- 10.5 oz flank or sirloin steak (300 g raw), giving about 220 g cooked
- 8 cups arugula (250 g)
- ½ cup crumbled blue cheese (60 g)
- 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes (150 g)
- ⅔ cup thinly sliced red onion (80 g)
For the vinaigrette
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (15 g)
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (30 g)
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (5 g)
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Notes on the ones that matter:
Flank or sirloin, not ribeye. Both are lean enough that the protein figure holds and both slice well. A fattier cut would push the calories up considerably without adding protein.
Eight cups of arugula is a lot of arugula, and it’s assertively peppery at that volume. If you find it too strong, replace half with baby spinach — you’ll lose about half a gram of protein per serving and nothing else.
A real blue cheese. Gorgonzola, Roquefort or Stilton. Pre-crumbled supermarket blue is usually coated to stop it clumping and tastes like it.
The vinaigrette is two parts vinegar to one part oil, where a standard vinaigrette is the reverse. That’s deliberate — there’s blue cheese and steak fat in this bowl, and a rich dressing on top would be too much. The Dijon is what holds it together at that ratio. If you want it rounder, add another tablespoon of olive oil, which costs about 60 calories per serving.
How to Make It
- Take the steak out of the fridge 20 minutes before cooking if you can, and pat it completely dry. Surface moisture steams instead of searing.
- Season it generously with salt and pepper, on both sides.
- Sear it in a very hot pan, 3 to 4 minutes a side for medium-rare on a steak of this thickness. Don’t move it while it cooks.
- Rest it for a full 10 minutes on a board or warm plate. Set a timer — this is the step people cut short.
- Make the vinaigrette and dress the salad while the steak rests. Whisk the vinegar, Dijon and pepper together, then the olive oil, and toss with the arugula, tomatoes and onion.
- Slice the steak against the grain, as thinly as you can, and lay it over the dressed leaves. Scatter the blue cheese over and serve.
Tips
Dry the steak, and get the pan properly hot. A wet steak in a lukewarm pan steams grey. You want the pan hot enough that the meat sizzles immediately and doesn’t stick after the first minute.
Season the steak, not the salad. The blue cheese carries 837 mg of sodium across the recipe. Salt goes on the meat, where it does something, and nowhere else.
Rest it on a board, not a plate. A plate traps steam underneath and softens the crust you just built.
Use the resting juices. Whatever collects on the board after 10 minutes can be whisked into the vinaigrette. It’s a small amount and it tastes like the best part of the steak.
Slice at an angle, not straight down. A 45-degree cut gives you wider slices that look better and are easier to eat on a salad.
Substitutions
Sirloin, skirt or flat iron in place of flank. All slice well and all benefit from the same treatment. Skirt steak needs a shorter cook and even more care with the grain.
Feta or goat cheese instead of blue. Milder, and both hold their crumb. You lose the characteristic pairing but the salad still works.
Watercress instead of arugula. Similar peppery quality, slightly more delicate.
Add-ins worth trying: thinly sliced radish, roasted red pepper, pickled shallots, or a few walnuts toasted in the steak pan after the meat comes out.
Storage
Same day. Assembled, this doesn’t keep at all — dressed arugula collapses within the hour and cold steak on a salad is unpleasant.
The components fare better. Cooked steak keeps 3 days refrigerated, and it’s actually good sliced cold in a sandwich the next day, just not on a salad. The vinaigrette keeps a week.
If you want a low carb salad genuinely built for the fridge, the sesame ginger chicken slaw holds four days.
High Protein Steak and Blue Cheese Salad
Ingredients
Method
- Pat the steak completely dry and season it generously with salt and pepper on both sides.
- Sear it in a very hot pan for 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare, without moving it.
- Rest the steak on a board for a full 10 minutes. Do not cut it early.
- While it rests, whisk the red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and black pepper together, then whisk in the olive oil.
- Toss the arugula, cherry tomatoes and red onion with the vinaigrette.
- Slice the steak thinly against the grain at a 45-degree angle, lay it over the dressed leaves, and scatter the blue cheese over the top.
Notes
- Steak weight in the nutrition figures is a cooked weight. 300 g raw gives about 220 g cooked.
- Resting for the full 10 minutes is what keeps the juice in the meat rather than on the board and in the leaves.
- Slicing against the grain matters more on flank steak than the degree of doneness does.
Nutrition
Per serving (recipe makes 2):
| Calories | 450 |
| Protein | 45 g |
| Carbohydrates | 12 g |
| Fiber | 4 g |
| Fat | 26 g |
| Sodium | 572 mg |
These figures are calculated ingredient by ingredient from a USDA-sourced nutrition database and divided by the serving count. They’re calculated values rather than laboratory-tested ones, and they’ll shift with your brands and with how closely the steak is trimmed. Steak is a cooked weight, lean and trimmed. The figures don’t include the salt used to season the meat. Carbohydrates include fiber, following the US convention, so net carbs are about 9 grams per serving — the second lowest of any recipe here.
Most of the sodium comes from the blue cheese, at 837 mg across the whole recipe.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should you rest steak before slicing?
Ten minutes for a flank or sirloin steak of normal thickness. During cooking, the muscle fibers contract and force moisture toward the center; resting lets them relax and reabsorb it. Cut too early and that juice runs onto the board — you can’t put it back, and on a salad it soaks into the leaves.
Why slice steak against the grain?
Flank steak has long muscle fibers running in one visible direction. Slicing across them at roughly 90 degrees cuts those fibers short, so each bite is tender. Slicing along them leaves the fibers full length and the meat chews tough — on flank steak this matters more than how well you cooked it.
What cut of steak is best for a salad?
Flank, sirloin, skirt or flat iron. All are lean enough to keep the calorie count reasonable, and all slice into thin strips that sit well on leaves. Ribeye works but is much fattier, which raises the calories without adding protein.
How much protein is in a steak salad?
This one has 45 grams per serving, about 34 of which come from 110 g of cooked flank steak. Lean flank runs roughly 30 grams of protein per 100 g cooked, among the highest of any ingredient on this site.
Can I make this ahead of time?
Not assembled. Dressed arugula collapses within an hour and cold steak on a salad isn’t pleasant. Cooked steak keeps 3 days refrigerated and the vinaigrette keeps a week, but this is a salad to build and eat.
More High Protein Salads
This is one of fifteen recipes in the high protein salad collection, grouped by no-cook, low carb, vegetarian and meal prep, with protein and calories compared across all fifteen.
For the only recipe here with fewer net carbs, the turkey cobb salad comes in at 5 grams with 53 grams of protein.
Made this? Leave a rating and tell me how it went in the comments — especially if you changed something that worked.
The steak made this feel more like a restaurant-style salad. I followed the advice to let the meat rest before slicing, and it stayed much juicier than when I usually cut steak straight away.