Larb
Minced meat cooked in its own liquid and dressed off the heat, with toasted rice powder for body.
Pork. Not vegetarian — contains fish sauce, pork.
Ingredients
- 500 g minced pork
- 4 tablespoons glutinous rice, for the powder
- 4 tablespoons lime juice
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 2 teaspoons dried chilli flakes
- 4 shallots, thinly sliced
- 4 spring onions, sliced
- 1 large bunch mint leaves
- 1 bunch coriander
- 80 ml water
Method
- TOASTED RICE POWDER IS THE BODY OF THE DISH, not a garnish. Raw glutinous rice in a dry pan over a medium heat, shaken constantly, 8 to 10 minutes, until it is deep brown and smells like popcorn. Pound it to a coarse sand. It thickens the dressing and gives the whole thing its nutty backbone -- without it larb is wet mince in lime juice.
- Grind it coarse, not to flour. You want grit you can feel.
- ONE DISH, NOT ONE PER PROTEIN. Pork here; chicken, beef or duck is the same method with the same timings, and a variation rather than another page.
- COOK THE MEAT IN WATER, NOT OIL. 80 ml in a hot pan, mince in, broken up hard with a spoon as it goes. 4 to 5 minutes, until it has gone from pink to grey and the water has almost boiled away. Fried in oil it browns and seizes into pellets; poached like this it stays loose and tender.
- Break it up continuously for the first minute. Mince left to sit sets into a slab that never separates properly.
- TAKE THE PAN OFF THE HEAT before anything else goes in. Lime juice on a hot pan turns bitter, and the herbs collapse instantly.
- Fish sauce, lime juice and chilli flakes in, stirred through the warm meat.
- Shallots and spring onions in while it is still warm, so they soften slightly.
- Rice powder in, then the mint and coriander folded through at the very last moment, off the heat and almost cool.
- Taste: sour first, salty second, hot third. Serve with sticky rice and raw vegetables.
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