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Khua kling

Mince dry-fried with paste until no liquid is left at all, and fiercely hot by design.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains curry paste, which usually contains shrimp paste, fish sauce, pork.

Ingredients

Method

  1. DRY-FRIED UNTIL NO LIQUID IS LEFT AT ALL. The finished dish should be loose, separate grains of mince coated in paste, with nothing pooling in the pan. Every other minced-pork dish here keeps some sauce; this one is cooked past that point on purpose, which takes 12 to 15 minutes of patience after it looks ready.
  2. IT IS MEANT TO BE FIERCELY HOT. This is the hottest page on the site and toning the paste down produces something with no identity at all. Serve it in small amounts with a great deal of rice and raw vegetables, which is how the heat is managed.
  3. Fry the paste and turmeric in the oil over a medium heat, 3 minutes, until it darkens and the oil separates.
  4. Pork in, broken up hard, 5 minutes, until it has all turned colour.
  5. Water in -- a splash only, to stop the paste catching while the pork releases its own liquid.
  6. NOW KEEP GOING. The pan will be wet for several minutes, then the liquid boils away and the mince starts to sizzle rather than bubble. That change in sound is the signal.
  7. From that point, 3 to 4 minutes more, stirring constantly, until the mince is dry and separate and the paste has coated every grain.
  8. Fish sauce and palm sugar in at the very end, which will wet it briefly; cook that off too.
  9. LIME LEAVES IN OFF THE HEAT, shredded as finely as you can manage. They are the fresh note cutting through, and cooked in they go dull and leathery.
  10. Taste one grain. It should be dry, salty, aromatic and then very hot indeed.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Thailand · All recipes