Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Larb Gai (Thai Spicy Chicken Salad)

Larb, in Thai word means 'ground (adj.)', when we have this meal in Thai, we like to ground the chicken with big knife or bone knife here, grounding it until the meat becomes smaller. There is some people love to eat Larb without cooking with temperature heat, but they use spice heats to cook the meat out of raw. I personally never ever eat raw meat, accept some raw fish.

Gai, in Thai word means 'chicken', for this recipe I use ground chicken but you can always use different kind of ground meat but the recipe will may need to add up more seasoning or other ingredient which I will put up more later on.

I have cooked this meals so many times, I love it so much because it feels lean and fresh. No need oil which is great for who are going to cut fatty meal out of their diet. Having this salad with lettuce will put you to consume more vegetable and eating healthier meal. However if you would like to have with rice is perfectly fine too.

Larb Gai (Spicy chicken salad)

Tip; for who that doesn't like smell of fish sauce, try to add fish sauce while still cooking, just because you want to cook the smell fishy in fish sauce out and get aromatic smell of fish sauce instead. I found out when I first cook this meal for my Thai friends but Rob couldn't even eat it because of the strong smell of raw fish sauce, so i just cook it in the end of cooking meat, most likely when you cook anchovy in some Italian cooking. And if they still couldn't like the the smell of it, try to substitute with salt that would be a good compromise too.

Ingredient;

1        lbs ground chicken
1/2     cup  sliced shallot
1/4     cup  roasted sticky rice, grounded but not powdery fine*
1        cup  fresh mint leaves
1        spring of green  onion, chopped
3-4    tbsp  fish sauce or substitute 2 tbsp fish sauce with 1 tsp salt
1       pints each of salt and black pepper
2       tbsp  dried hot chili pepper, grounded
1       tsp sugar
4-5   tbsp  fresh lime juice

Direction;

1. Over hot pan, add ground chicken, salt and black pepper, break up the chicken into pieces, cook for about 8-10 minutes or until the chicken perfectly cooked. Add fish sauce cook until aromatic then turn the heat off.
2. Add ground roasted sticky rice, sugar, grounded hot chili, shallot and lime juice, give it a taste as you like. Then, add green onion and mint leaves combined well. Serve over green leave lettuce or steam rice.