Thai Ground Pork Salad (Laab)

Today I made one of my favorite Thai dish of all times, Laab. It's basically a ground pork salad, eaten hot or cold, seasoned and flavored with fish sauce, lime juice, cilantro and chilies. The secret to making this dish taste like you just took a trip to Thailand is the ground toasted rice powder. This is one of my favorite Thai dish because it's sour, it's salty and it's got a bit of that slight crunch from the toasted rice and shallots. I used to eat this all the time when I was in Thailand. It's one of those dishes that kind of define your childhood.

Okay, I might br getting a little carried away with this whole defining my childhood thing, and it's a bit cheesy. Pretty much any Thai food reminds me of my childhood and I'm just super stoked that I found the recipe for Laab and it's simple enough that I can make at home without much fuss.

Today I make ground pork Laab but you can substitute ground pork for ground turkey, chicken or even ground beef. If you're going to be using chicken or turkey, I would suggest sauteing them with a bit of oil since they are a bit leaner than pork or beef. This recipe calls for cooking the ground meat in just a bit of water and I've tried that technique with ground chicken and it does get a bit dry.

Here are the ingredients that you would need to make this dish.

1 pound ground pork

1/4 tablespoon ground dried chili pepper or crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

3 tablespoon fish sauce

4 limes juiced

1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots

1-2 tablespoon toasted rice

chopped green onion and cilantro for garnish

You start by toasting the rice. Set a nonstick pan on medium high heat with the rice in it. You need to stick around the pan to make sure the rice doesn't burn because it happens really fast. It'll take about 5 minutes for the rice to toast. Make sure to keep stirring the rice until it is a nice gold brown.

Once it gets that golden brown color, immediately take it off the stove and transfer it to a mortar. If you don't have a mortar, go ahead and ground the toasted rice in coffee grinder, food processor or a blender. Any one of those would do the trick. I like my mortar because come on, how often do you get to use one of those things? That and it's a great way to take out your frustrations.

I love my little mini mortar that I stole from my mom's house.

Now that your rice is toasted and the shallots and cilantro chopped take half a lime and squeeze the juice to marinate the ground pork a few minutes before cooking. Make sure the juice is mixed in well with the pork.

Heat up the pan until it is super hot and then add in 2 tablespoon of water. Immediately add in the ground pork and stir, making sure that the pork doesn't stick to the pan. Cook until the meat is well done and most of the moisture from the meat has evaporated. Put the ground pork into a mixing bowl. Now add in the juice of the remaining limes, chopped shallots, cilantro, chili powder and half of the toasted rice. Mix everything together and taste. Depending on your preferences, you might want to add more fish sauce, chili powder or maybe even more lime. I personally love love, love sour food so I actually add about 6 limes into my Laab.

Go ahead and arrange the Laab on a bed of lettuce or just eat it as is. Garnish it with some cilantro and the rest of the toasted rice and you're all set.

And there you have it~! This dish is great. If you're not one for giving up meat with your salad, you can eat this by the bucketful. It's only fat is from the ground pork itself since we cooked it with water instead of oil. And in my opinion, this is probably a lot better than all the oil that goes into your caesar salad dressing. Definitely give this dish a try and if you do, be sure to let me know how you like it~!