Infusing Mediterranean Beef Salad and Greek Vinaigrette
Hot days and a fridge full of fresh produce are a good enough reason to make this salad. It came together in one pan and one bowl, it keeps well for leftovers, and if you want to bring your cannabis practice into the kitchen without turning on the oven, this is a solid place to start.
This recipe is from Gourmet Nutrition: The Cookbook for the Fit Food Lover, a book that has survived more than one cookbook purge on my shelf for good reason. It’s simple, it’s fresh, and it makes eating well feel like the easier option rather than the responsible one. The Mediterranean beef salad with Greek vinaigrette is exactly that kind of recipe.
I doubled it the first time I made it, because leftovers are never a bad idea, and I’d do it again.
Listen to this episode:
The Mediterranean Beef Salad
The base is stir-fry beef, fresh vegetables, olives, and feta. That’s it. You’re not making a production out of dinner. You’re making something that tastes like it took more effort than it did.
Olives are worth giving a little thought to. A lot of canned black olives have a woody, muted flavor that doesn’t do much for a salad like this. What works well here is a good jar of garlic-stuffed green olives. Costco carries a large jar that’s worth keeping in the fridge. You get the brininess, a little garlic, and a texture that holds up once they’re halved and tossed in with everything else.
For the feta, regular fat. The low-fat version exists, but the flavor doesn’t compare. If you’re watching portions, use less of the good stuff. You’ll be more satisfied.
The Greek Vinaigrette
The vinaigrette is where the infusion lives. Extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, shallots, fresh basil, salt and pepper. Whisk it together and drizzle it on just before serving.
If you’re using infused olive oil, a few things to keep in mind.
The recipe calls for half a cup of olive oil. Depending on the potency of your infusion, that’s a significant dose spread across however many servings you’re making. Use the Bite Me Dosage Calculator to work out your per-serving milligrams before you make the batch. Don’t skip that step.
One of the things I like about this particular recipe is how naturally it accommodates mixed tables. Make the vinaigrette without infused oil, then drizzle a little infused EVOO directly onto individual plates for people who are partaking. Everyone eats the same meal. No awkward explanations required. That’s how this works best.
Recipe
Yield: 2 servings (easily doubled) Prep time: 15 min Cook time: 10 min
Ingredients
For the salad:
- Stir-fry beef, thinly sliced
- 5 small olives (garlic-stuffed green recommended), halved
- 1 cup large cucumber, rough chopped
- 1 cup large tomato, diced
- 1/2 cup Feta cheese, crumbled (full fat recommended)
- 1/2 cup red onion, thinly sliced
For the Greek vinaigrette:
- 1/2 cup (125 ml) extra virgin olive oil (or infused EVOO)
- 1/2 cup Red wine vinegar, to taste
- 1/4 cup Shallots, finely minced
- 1/4 cup Fresh basil, chopped
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Cook the beef. Sear the stir-fry beef in a hot pan until cooked to your liking. Let it rest, then slice into strips.
- Prep the vegetables. Rough chop the cucumber, dice the tomato, thinly slice the red onion, and halve or quarter the olives. You want substance here, not a fine dice.
- Make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, shallots, fresh basil, salt and pepper. The oil and vinegar will separate as it sits, so give it a good whisk right before you dress the plates. If using infused olive oil, calculate your dose per serving with the Bite Me Dosage Calculator before adding it.
- Assemble. Combine the beef, vegetables and olives in a large bowl. Crumble feta over the top.
- Dress and serve. Plate the salad and drizzle the vinaigrette over individual portions just before serving. Store any leftover vinaigrette separately.
Infused Olive Oil: A Note on Dosing
If you’re new to infusing olive oil at home, the Complete Guide to Cannabis Infusions is the place to start. It walks through the process from decarboxylation to final potency so you know what you’re actually working with before it goes anywhere near a meal.
Half a cup of olive oil in a vinaigrette divided across two or four servings can be a meaningful dose. Treat it like any other edible: start with less, wait for it, adjust from there.
If you’re tracking your batches (which I recommend), the Bite Me Dose Diary is a physical journal designed specifically for this. Every time your variables change, your batch notes are what let you replicate the good ones and learn from the others.
Variations
This recipe doesn’t need much tinkering, but here’s what works well if you want to play with it:
- Swap the beef for grilled chicken. Works just as well.
- Add kalamata olives alongside the green for a deeper, more complex flavor.
- Toss in roasted red peppers if you want a little sweetness.
- A sprinkle of hemp hearts on top adds omega-3s and a bit of crunch.
- Try infused avocado oil in place of olive oil if you prefer a more neutral base.
Why These Ingredients Work
The olive oil brings monounsaturated fats and, if you’re using infused EVOO, a fat-soluble carrier for cannabinoids. Cannabinoids bind to fat, which is why oil-based infusions are one of the most effective and versatile ways to incorporate cannabis into cooking. Fresh basil adds aromatics and antioxidants. Feta brings calcium and protein. The vegetables are simple and nutrient-dense without asking much of you.
It’s a meal that’s genuinely good for you, and that happens to be an easy home for an infusion. That’s the whole idea here.
Episode 255 Highlights
This salad came up in episode 255, where I also talked through the process of infusing olive oil for the vinaigrette and how to adjust potency depending on who’s at the table. I’d just finished recording an interview with an olive oil expert about common misconceptions around extra virgin olive oil (that episode came out shortly after), and I was also unboxing a pair of 8000Kicks hemp shoes that had arrived the same day.
A good episode. A good salad. Both hold up.
That’s it for this week friends. Please email me any questions, comments, pictures of your creations or anything else, I love hearing from listeners! Direct messages to stayhigh@bitemepodcast.com or the podcast hotline
You can also support the show by subscribing, sharing episodes, leaving a review or buying me a cookie! Whatever way you choose, I’m grateful that you’re listening.
Stay high,
Margaret
Frequently Asked Questions On Mediterranean Beef Salad
Can I make this salad ahead of time? The salad components hold up well, but keep the vinaigrette separate until just before serving. The oil will coat and soften everything if it sits too long. Leftovers the next day are still excellent, especially if you dress each serving fresh.
What cut of beef works best? Stir-fry beef is cut thin and cooks quickly, which is the point. If you’re slicing your own, any tender cut works well. Let it rest before adding it to the salad so it stays juicy.
How do I infuse olive oil for this recipe? Decarboxylate your flower first, then infuse it into the oil at a low temperature. A full walkthrough is in the Cannabis Infusions Complete Guide. Don’t skip decarboxylation. It’s the step that makes your infusion actually work.
How do I figure out how much infused olive oil to use? Start with the Bite Me Dosage Calculator. You’ll need to know the approximate potency of your infused oil. From there, you can determine how much to add per serving to hit your target dose. Blend infused and non-infused oil in the vinaigrette to dial it in.
Can I use CBD oil instead of THC? Yes. CBD-infused olive oil works the same way in this recipe. Same dosing principles apply. Use what fits your wellness goals.
What if I’m cooking for people who don’t consume cannabis? Make the vinaigrette with plain olive oil and drizzle a small amount of infused EVOO over individual plates for people who want it. It’s one of the easiest ways to accommodate a mixed table without making two versions of the meal.
Is this recipe good for beginners? If you’re new to cooking with cannabis, this is a good recipe to start with. The infusion is in the dressing, not baked in, which gives you more control over your dose. Use the dosage calculator, start with a conservative amount, and see how it goes.
Timestamps For Mediterranean Beef Salad Audio
Welcome to episode 255 (00:00:05)
Marge introduces the episode and discusses her recent interview with an olive oil expert.
Greek vinaigrette and fan mail (00:01:05)
Marge talks about preparing a Greek vinaigrette, receiving fan mail, and sharing jokes from listeners.
New hemp shoes (00:02:29)
Marge talks about receiving a pair of 8000 Kicks hemp shoes and her excitement to unbox them.
Mediterranean beef salad recipe (00:04:50)
Marge discusses a recipe for a Mediterranean beef salad and her experience with the preparation process.
Infusing olive oil for the Greek vinaigrette (00:08:27)
Marge explains the process of infusing olive oil for the Greek vinaigrette and provides tips for adjusting potency.
Wrapping up and listener engagement (00:12:25)
Marge encourages listeners to share the episode and invites them to submit their voice recordings for potential inclusion in future episodes.
Marge (00:00:05) - Welcome to episode 255, where we do a Greek vinaigrette with a mediterranean beef salad. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and Certified Ganjier. Marge and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here. And thank you for joining me today. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Bite Me. I'm really glad that you're here listening along. And I just got off recording an interview with a woman who is an expert in olive oil to hopefully clear up some of the questions that many people have about olive oil, myself included. Because I love olive oil, I love infusing it. I love using it for a lot of different things cooking, baking, topicals. She clears up some of the misconceptions and some of the confusion around olive oil. And I'm really excited for that interview to come out. So I'm kind of writing a high right now as we get into this episode.
Marge (00:01:05) - So let's get into it. Like I said, we are doing a Greek vinaigrette, and I'm not even sure I have much housekeeping to do today. I've got too many windows open, so I can't really find what I'm looking for. I don't know if I've had any. I may have had some fan mail that I wanted to look at, but I didn't pull it up. I do have a couple of fan mails that I got, and a couple of these were from Rochester, New York, and they were jokes and I really appreciate these messages. Feel free to send me fan mail. It can be about how you found out about the show, a favorite episode, or you just want to say hi and that you're listening. Because a lot of the times I'm sitting here in my home office talking away, I love talking to guests. So that's why I do like to have them on off. And I've recorded a couple other ones that I will be excited to release as well, because they were really interesting.
Marge (00:01:54) - I have another one booked, but when I'm not sitting here talking to a guest, I'm talking to myself. That's what it feels like. So sometimes I'm trying to imagine a listener sitting on the other side of my laptop and my microphone, and that could be you. But these are a couple of fan mails from New York. What type of shoes do kidnappers prefer? White vans. That's that's kind of cute. how many South Americans does it take to change a light bulb? Brazilian. I think this is where I need the most.
Marge (00:02:29) - I don't know if.
Marge (00:02:29) - That will come through or not. Speaking of white vans as well, I ordered myself a pair of 8000 kicks hemp shoes, and they just arrived. I could see the delivery truck coming up the driveway, and so I haven't even pulled them out of the box or looked at them yet because I went from the interview right to this recording. But I'm going to be checking those out. Maybe I'll do a little unboxing because I'm pretty excited to get those I had intended to pick up a pair while I was in Germany.
Marge (00:02:59) - There was a store that carries this brand of shoes in Berlin, but every time I went to go do it, other things would come up because this store was a full hour train ride on the other side of Berlin, and I just never seemed to make it to that part of town. I mean, I was there a few other occasions doing other things, but then I wasn't shopping or in shopping mode, so I never made it to the store. And so I ended up ordering them and they came pretty quickly, actually. They ship out from the States, I believe, so it's not like they were being shipped overseas, and I'm super excited to try them on and see if they fit. I love their I love what they have on their website, so let's see if it lives up to it in person. I did have Bernardo, the founder of the company, on the show a little while ago, so I'm really excited to see these shoes in person. It might be one of the first real hemp items that I own currently that I can think of.
Marge (00:03:54) - Actually, I own a couple pairs of hemp socks, and I did have a couple of pairs of sets of hemp masks back in the day when that was a requirement to live, but no longer. So a link to 8000 kicks in the show notes if you're interested in something like that. They're waterproof, and I know a couple of people that have bought them. Actually somebody I was talking to, I'm trying to remember who it was. So they purchased a pair of 8000 kicks after listening to my show about it, and they said they love them. So I'm excited because who doesn't love new sneakers? I actually own a pair of vans, some slip on vans. I wear them all the time. I've kind of worn the crap out of them. But sometimes you don't want flowers on your shoes. Sometimes you want something that's just a solid color. We're going to be trying those out. So let's get into today's episode, because I've got a lot of stuff going on today, and I'm worried that I'm not going to have the time to record this before I get interrupted.
Marge (00:04:50) - As I mentioned, a beef Mediterranean salad with Greek vinaigrette, which is a beautiful way to enjoy the summer bounty that we are currently enjoying at least. It's a lovely meal to have when it's hot out and you don't feel like cooking. And it's a pretty simple meal to put together, so I'll start with the salad. First of all, in this recipe came from a book called Gourmet Nutrition The Cookbook for the Fit Food Lover, and that cookbook is one I've had on my shelf for quite some time, and I did mean to. I did keep it. I've had, I've, you know, done a purge of my cookbooks a couple times over the years because I do tend to like to collect cookbooks. This one stayed on the shelf because it did have a lot of healthy recipes. It used a lot of fresh ingredients that weren't too difficult to make, because sometimes you want to eat healthy, but you don't always want to feel like you're having to put in like an hour just to make dinner or something like that.
Marge (00:05:42) - And this one came together pretty quickly. Now I will say my only complaint is that it said prep time five minutes. Cooking time five minutes. I don't think it was that fast. In my opinion, it was not five minutes to prep because you got to chop the vegetables, but it didn't take that long either. And essentially this Mediterranean salad was you and it makes a small salad. It said it said serves one large or two small. So I doubled it because I was going to be sharing this meal. Also love having leftovers because what do you think I'll be having for another meal later today? Yes, that is right. A beef Mediterranean salad with this Greek vinaigrette. It was so good last night. It's going to be even better today. I know it, but what do you need for the salad? You need stir fry beef. You need small olives, cucumber, tomato, feta cheese and onion. It actually calls for low fat feta cheese. But I just did regular fat feta cheese because I don't really do low fat dairy of anything.
Marge (00:06:42) - I don't see the point of it. I want the full flavor. If you're concerned about that, you could always use the low fat feta and or you could just use less of the regular feta, whatever you happen to have. But it's basically that's it. It's all these vegetables. You mix them all together. I did start out by stir frying the beef and I cut it into strips so that it would be able to put it on the salad later. And then I did have olives in the fridge. Now I didn't use candles. I used jarred olives that were in the fridge. So I did slice them up myself. So some of that stuff, if you're buying, you know, maybe candles that are already sliced, that might be faster. But I find a lot of the candles, especially if you're doing black olives, which I found out something about that in the interview today, which you'll learn about later when that episode comes out. They taste kind of Woody. I'm not really crazy about the flavor, although I do recall when one of my daughters was young.
Marge (00:07:37) - She loved to go to the kitchen, open up a can of black olives and just eat them right out of the can, and she would eat the whole thing. And unusual, yes, but a cheap snack for a growing teenage girl also, yes. So I didn't really complain about it. I just didn't see how she could do it. And then a lot of those green olives you can get in the grocery store are also so incredibly salty. You can eat like one olive and that's it. So what the one, the ones that I like is Costco carries in my local Costco, a large jar of garlic stuffed green olives. And those are my favorites. So the salad does have a bit of garlic in it too, because I chopped up the garlic along with it, of course. So I just sliced the olives, I think just in half pretty much. Maybe in quarters. A large cucumber diced I diced is maybe a misnomer. I kind of rough chopped it. You don't. I don't want this pieces too small.
Marge (00:08:27) - I want some substance to the cell that I'm eating. You're going to dice that large tomato. And then I did happen to buy feta that was just in a solid block. So I had to cut that up as well. And then thin sliced onion and you put all that together and right there you have something really healthy. Not too many ingredients, ingredients that you can easily pick up at the grocery store, at the market. And then you put together your Greek vinaigrette. And of course, this is where you're going to be doing your infusion. And the main ingredient, well, I shouldn't say the main. It's actually extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar and the extra virgin olive oil you can infuse with CBD, THC, whatever you want, but you can use it in a ratio and it uses a half cup of olive oil. So depending on how potent your olive oil is, that could be a very strong I would recommend. You probably don't need a whole half cup of infused olive oil for this particular recipe, because you could be going flying high.
Marge (00:09:25) - Another thing to keep in mind is that you can also not infuse this vinaigrette. And because it's an olive oil based dish, it's really easy to take some of your infused olive oil and drizzle it on top and mix it around on your individual serving plate, so that if you're dining with people who aren't indulging, then you can easily enjoy your infused meal and they don't have to. So that's another advantage of this particular recipe that you can infuse it or not to infuse it. It's totally up to you. So again, extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, shallots, fresh basil and salt and pepper. And that's it. And you have a Greek vinaigrette. And it was lovely. And you of course could use this on any kind of salad. Of course you don't have to use it on this Mediterranean version. But of course, these two pairs together beautifully, and I'm actually salivating a little bit right now because I'm getting kind of hungry. And I'd really like to enjoy this. And I'm going to be probably in the next hour or so.
Marge (00:10:30) - But you essentially add all of these ingredients together, you whisk them up, and of course it is going to separate as these types of things do. So you're going to want to give it a good whisk before you drizzle it on on your salad. But that's essentially it. This may be a short episode because it doesn't really get that much more difficult than that. I mean, you're cooking some beef, you're chopping some vegetables, and you're mixing together some oil and vinegar with a couple extra items. That is the beauty of summer cooking that I absolutely love. And I know that when I did that poll, some people had requested some summer salad. And this one is for you. And it's not necessarily a short ingredient list. It's not a 3 or 5 ingredient, but it is light, it's summery, it's super healthy, and that olive oil is going to really coat those vegetables as well. Yeah, they just suggest that you serve or you drizzle your vinaigrette, your Greek vinaigrette, on top after you've plated the Mediterranean beef salad.
Marge (00:11:29) - And that's probably the best way to go, but you could probably put it right in the salad as well. You just want to watch the portion to make sure it's not too there's not too much. Yeah, that's essentially it. A short episode today, but short and sweet because it's summertime and I know you're all busy and maybe you're sliding in this podcast episode amongst some of your other favorite podcast episodes out there, and I hope that you enjoy this one, because I'm going to be making it more than once. It's super easy, and I think this one would really lend itself well to using something like chicken instead of beef. I think it's versatile enough to do that. Now, of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with somebody that you love. And there's something else that I'm wanting to try. I put it out in the Bite Me email newsletter, and if you haven't subscribed to that, the real question is why not? You can go over to the website and do that over there pretty easily.
Marge (00:12:25) - I don't email you too much. I send out like one monthly newsletter and then there's some reminders about weekly episodes. But I don't want to fill your inbox with all kinds of stuff that you won't be appreciating. But if you would like to lend your voice to bite me, here's what you can do. You can send a message to the podcast hotline, because that's a way for you to record your voice. And I can use that audio in an episode. And you would just say something like, hi, I'm Marge, I'm from Ontario, Canada, and you're listening to Bite Me, the show about edibles. And if you can do that, I will include it in an upcoming episode. And I thought that would be really fun because there's a real diversity of listeners out there, and it's really cool to hear where everybody is from. it's really cool to hear where listeners are listening from. So something if you're interested in doing that, by all means, please consider it. And you can find a link to the podcast hotline.
Marge (00:13:25) - Usually it's at the end of every every episode webpage. There's a link to it. I'm your host, Marj, and until next time, stay high.
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