Green Papaya Salad (som tam)

Green Papaya Salad (som tam) Prep time: 10 mins  Cooking time: -

Ingredients

  • 1 garlic clove, peeled
  • 3-4 bird's eye chillies
  • 1 tbsp dried shrimp (optional)
  • 6 French beans (cut into 2cm lengths)
  • 1 tbsp salted roasted peanuts
  • 2 tsp palm sugar or muscovado sugar (granulated sugar is fine as an alternative)
  • 1 1/2 tbsp Blue Dragon Fish Sauce
  • 1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
  • 3 cherry tomatoes (chopped in half)
  • 70g green papaya, finely shredded
  • 20g carrot - finely shredded
Serves: 2

 Minced Garlic

Try this recipe with

Minced Garlic

Green Papaya Salad (som tam)

A delicious crunchy exotic salad using the unripe papaya, or 'green' papaya. This is a typical salad enjoyed by Thai people all over Thailand.

Preparation:

  1. In a mortar, roughly pound the garlic and chillies.
  2. When crushed to a rough paste, add the dried shrimps (or omit if unavailable) and pound until smooth.
  3. Add the beans and peanuts and pound, until the beans are bruised and the peanuts are roughly crushed.
  4. Add the sugar, Fish Sauce and lime juice and stir together. Add the tomatoes and bruise gently with the pestle.
  5. In a large mixing bowl place the shredded green papaya and shredded carrot and mix in the dressing. Ideal served with grilled meats.

Useful tip:

It’s important to keep tasting when cooking Thai food... more

In thailand they use a wooden pestle and mortar to make this dish, as it enables the cook to bruise the vegetables more gently.

If you can't get hold of a papaya, you can use a cucumber instead.

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