One of South America’s greatest gifts to meat lovers is chimichurri sauce, a balanced mixture of herby, tart, and spicy flavors. It’s fresh and bright, perfect for summer grilled meats, including a juicy, delicious steak. Some even use it as a marinade, so the flavors go deep into the grain.
While a chimichurri steak with more sauce on the side is an impeccable meal, you’ll certainly feel it’s complete with a perfect side dish. Excellent choices for a side dish include carb-packed treats like bread or potatoes or a simple light salad to compliment the dense meat. Read this article to find out 13 tasty side dishes for chimichurri steak.
1. Blackberry Goat Cheese Salad
Berries and fruits are usually reserved for dessert, but you might want to pick out your blackberries for this side salad. The flavors in the recipe are unlike your usual salad – tart blackberries, tangy goat cheese, leafy arugula, and crunchy nuts. All these ingredients are tossed in a homemade dressing made from honey, garlic, olive oil, lemon, salt, and pepper. Overall, it’s light and fresh, great for chimichurri steak!
2. Peach and Tomato Caprese Salad
A caprese salad is distinct for its three elements: mozzarella, basil, and tomato. It’s fresh, creamy, and juicy, but if you want to insert sweet flavors, the best way to do so is to follow this recipe. It incorporates sweet peaches into a classic caprese salad, adding a new dimension to its taste profile. You’re sure to have a bright meal when this is paired with your chimichurri steak.
3. Butter Lettuce Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette
If you want to enhance the tangy flavors in your chimichurri steak meal, pair it with this butter lettuce salad with lemon vinaigrette. This dish has many textures and flavors, including butter lettuce leaves, asparagus stalks, peas, cucumber, radishes, almonds, avocado, and parmesan cheese. These fresh ingredients are brought together by a dressing made from olive oil, lemon, garlic, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper.
4. Fresh Summer Salad
Tone down that chimichurri heat with this refreshing and bright summer salad. As the dish’s name implies, this recipe uses fresh summer produce, including greens, veggies, nuts, and seeds. While there is a specific ingredient list, you can make changes and incorporate whatever new items you have, even fruits. There’s also cheese and dressing for creaminess and moisture.
5. Mexican Street Corn Chicken Pasta Salad
This salad has everything you need: protein from chicken, carbs from pasta, freshness from greens and veggies, creaminess from the cheese, and juicy flavors from corn. But even so, it feels light, bright, and refreshing, so it doesn’t detract much from the chimichurri steak. It even helps accentuate the tangy, savory, and spicy flavors as the dressing has cayenne pepper, garlic, and lime juice.
6. Classic Potato Salad
Many steak recipes, including chimichurri steak, work well with creamy potato dishes, such as this classic potato salad. The creaminess comes from the potatoes, sour cream, mayo, and mustard. Besides those, there’s also bacon, green onions, celery, parsley, and pickles. Thus, you can expect a great complex of flavors that’s prominent even when this salad is served cold for summer cookouts or grill parties.
7. Asian Cucumber Salad
This Asian cucumber salad is well-recommended during summer because of its refreshing, cool flavors. There’s also some acidity from the rice vinegar, which would pair well with the chimichurri tang. You’ll also encounter flavors unique to this recipe, such as the sweetness from honey-roasted peanuts and the umami from soy sauce. This is great if you want to try something new.
8. Fresh Tomato Salad
Speaking of refreshing, juicy flavors, you’ll get a lot of that from this fresh tomato salad. Such flavors are spectacular with chimichurri steak because they help tone down the heat and spice you get from the sauce. Moreover, this tomato salad has a great acidity and herby flavor that matches the chimichurri sauce. There’s also cheese to help cut through all those intense tastes.
9. Healthy Coleslaw
Creamy, cool, and crisp flavors come together in this healthy coleslaw recipe. It’s great for combatting that chimichurri spice and is easy to make. In fact, you’ll need only 10 minutes to prepare this salad, and the only ingredients you’ll need are coleslaw, Greek yogurt, mayo, salt, and black pepper. Combining Greek yogurt and mayo makes it creamy while keeping the fat content low, which is great for the health-conscious.
10. Salsa Criolla (Argentinian Salsa)
Chimichurri is often associated with Argentina, as well as Uruguay. Thus, it’s only fitting to pair it with a fresh Argentinian salad called salsa criolla. It is a bright, colorful, tangy ensemble of bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, red pepper, oregano, vinegar, and olive oil. This salsa is often served with meat, just like chimichurri.
11. Herbed Flatbread with Whipped Feta
Besides fresh salads, chimichurri steak goes well with various carb-packed side dishes, like this herbed flatbread. The herbed flavor of the bread complements the chimichurri sauce while also sopping up the great flavors. If you also seek creaminess in your meal, this recipe comes with whipped feta for the flatbread, which also has herbs incorporated into it.
12. Grilled Sweet Potato Fries
Steak and fries is a traditional and well-loved combination, and that fantastic partnership also applies to chimichurri steak. However, if you want to deviate from the starchy flavors of regular potatoes, give these sweet potato fries a try. Grilling imparts a unique smoky flavor to the fries, and it’s still as crisp-tender as the ones you get by deep-frying or baking.
13. Baked French Fries
For those who want to stick to simple yet classy dinner meals, pair your chimichurri steak with regular French fries instead – as in using regular potatoes. However, unlike the usual French fries, these aren’t deep-fried. Instead, you’ll be baking them to avoid the unhealthy and unpalatable oiliness that comes with fried potatoes. But even with this method, you’re not sacrificing quality; it’s still as crispy and tasty as ever!
