Thai papaya salad (Som tam)

http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/som-tam
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This is the first video in my Gapshida series that features a recipe from one of my readers. The first destination on my Gapshida tour was to visit Tanja Rogers in Canterbury, England.

She's been one of my readers for a long time, and she invited me to her house to share some traditional Thai recipes that she learned from her mother. For this salad she replaced papaya with swede (also known as rutabaga) because it's not easy for her to find a firm green papaya where she lives. When made with swede, this salad tastes almost the same as if it were made with papaya.

Directions:
1. Roughly crush a small handful of unsalted peanuts with mortar and pestle. Set aside. Wipe the mortar and pestle clean.

2. Melt palm sugar in a small pan at low or medium heat, adding 2 tbs of water. The cooking process should form a shiny and thick syrup. This makes it easier to mix the sugar with the salad.

3. Peel the papaya (or swede), shred it with a shredder (or a mandolin slicer) to thin stripes and soak them in cold water while you prepare the rest of the salad. This makes the papaya crunchier and gets rid of any excess starch from the swede.

4. Cut the green beans into one-inch pieces. Throw away the endings.

5. Take the chilies and peeled garlic and give them a gentle bash with mortar and pestle. You still ought to see bits and pieces, not a puree. Add the shrimps and continue bashing. Add the crushed peanuts and mix well.

6. Add the shredded papaya and continue bashing, but not too hard. Just enough so the mixture soaks up the flavours. Use a bigger table spoon as a support tool, that way you can shift the salad in the mortar and it doesn't fall out while bashing and mixing.

7. Add the liquid palm sugar, tomatoes, beans, lime juice and fish sauce. Continue to lightly bash, shift with the spoon, and mix a little more.

8. Serve on a big dish or bowl, sprinkle some crushed peanuts on top! Voila!


In Thailand it's usually served with sticky rice and along another dish called larb, a spice minced meat salad with raw vegetables.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Som tam
• som tum
• Thai papaya salad
• papaya salad
• Thai food
• Thai cooking
• Thai cuisine
• Maangchi recipes
• Gapshida recipes
• Spicy
• swede recipe
• salad recipe
• Thai recipes
• papaya
• green beans
• tomato
• peanuts
• fish sauce
• mango salad
• turnip salad
• Howto
• Cooking
• Kitchen
• Recipe

[lindakay00]

Or if you can't find papaya... use thinly shredded cucumber or green mango. Add some white rice vermicelli noodle, mix it in and it becomes a meal! You shld definatly come to MN one day and experience the Hmong flee market because the food there are phonomincal! An experience you will never forget!

[Maangchi]

@lindakay00 great tip! Thank you!

[OohSoVina1988]

i love mine very spicy ^_^ i use like 6 peppers or more lol

[Maangchi]

@OohSoVina1988 ooh~ : )

[tsif86]

Merry Christmas!

:-)

[Maangchi]

@tsif86 Merry Christmas!!

[yuexkyo2]

my favorite food, after thai mango salad.

[instantramen]

Maangchi, you need to try and make the real Lao papaya salad, the original. Once you try this, you'll see how much different it tastes from the Thai version. So please, give it a try!

[hlubTVXQ]

Tip: you can also use carrots, vermicelli longevity noodles, long beans, green mango, and cucumber...^^

[YaoiSutori]

Very nice!

[arale1402]

@1974bzy thank you for the tip :)

[m1zzAlee]

i'm not a big fan of papaya salad, but i still enjoy eating it :) growing up watching my mom make it, it always seemed so hard because she never used a shredder. but after learning about the shredder, that's all she uses now. good food!

[MrsWinkAb]

i bet the somtum was good! this is coming from a Thai btw haha

[1974bzy]

Kohlabi it taste more like green papaya, try the green one not the purple. or sherd zuccini

[nancy3418]

i like som tom

[arale1402]

@rendezvous65 no, you can skip the dried shrimp and even substitute the fishsauce with a very light soy sauce (a good brand is 'Healthy Boy').