Attach the flavors of authentic Lao dish on your table with this delicious Green Papaya Salad. Sweet, sour and spicy, it’s as delicious as it is easy to make. Let’s do it!
Green papaya salad is a staple in Laos culinary tradition, along with sticky steamed rice and meat salad. It is known as Tam Mak Hoong in Laos and som tam in Thailand, translated to “mashed papaya” or “pounding of sour ingredients”.
This dish is made with fresh chillies, lime juice, shrimp paste, palm sugar, garlic and fish sauce pounded in a mortar and pestle. This flavorful sauce is then mixed with shredded unripe papaya, halved tomatoes, chopped green beans, and sometimes eggplant. The result is a unique dish that combines the five main flavors of Lao cuisine: hot, sour, sweet, salty and fishy. Yummy!
Green papaya is very different from the sweet and juicy papaya we are used to here in the West. Unripe papaya is a very large fruit and has pale green flesh, firm and crisp. Chances are you won’t find green papaya in the supermarket but in your Asian grocery store. For this recipe, you’ll need to peel the papaya’s green skin, then cut the flesh into long, thin strips. A mandoline slicer in julienne mode will give you the best result effortlessly, but you can also use a knife or box grater.
As for the other ingredients, shrimp paste and fish sauce are easier to find even in a regular supermarket; but we will give you tips on how to exchange them if you can’t get them. It should be this papaya salad very sharp, so we recommend using Bird’s Eye chillies, which are thin, red chillies. If you find that they are too spicy for you, start with one and add more to taste.
What we love about this recipe is that it’s easy, quick and easy few calories. A portion has only 85 calories That means you can make it as an accompaniment to sticky rice, stir-fries, pasta, or glazed tofu. Impressively!