A Taste of Thailand: Ground Pork 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 a dish that takes to heart the balance of tastes that Thai cuisines are known for which is sour, sweet, salty and bitter.

This Laab I made today is made with ground pork 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 stay by the stove and keep an eye on the pan to make sure the rice doesn't burn because it happens really quickly. 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.

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 for 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.

Go ahead and arrange the Laab on a bed of lettuce and garnish it with some cilantro and a sprinkling of toasted rice.  This dish is great with rice or as is.  If you want to really indulge and have the full Thai experience, eat it with some sticky rice.  

And there you have it~! This dish is refreshing and great for the summer heat.  It can be eaten hot or room temperature.  This salad is very healthy since the only fat is from the ground pork because we didn't use any oil at all to saute the meat.  For those of you watching your weight, you can eat this without feeling the guilt.  And for those of you just looking for an easy Thai dish to recreate at home, definitely give this recipe a try.  Let me know how you like it!  Happy eating!

Posted in: Pork,Salad,Thai Cuisine