Isaan Food Beyond Som Tam: A Guide to the Northeast

Isaan is the great plateau of northeastern Thailand, bordered by the Mekong river and Laos to the north and east, and by Cambodia to the south. It is the largest region of the country and home to a huge share of its people, most of whom speak Isaan, a language closely related to Lao. The food is closely related to the food of Laos as well.

For many visitors, Isaan food begins and ends with som tam, the pounded green papaya salad. It is a fine place to start, but it is only one dish in a cuisine full of grilled meats, sharp herbal salads, sour soups and pungent fermented flavours. Eating Isaan food properly means understanding a few building blocks first.

The building blocks: pla ra, sticky rice and herbs

The defining flavour of Isaan is pla ra, fermented fish. Small freshwater fish are packed with salt and rice bran or roasted rice and left in jars for months until they break down into a thick, strongly scented paste and liquid. It is used much as fish sauce is used elsewhere, but it brings a deeper, funkier savouriness that is central to many dishes. The smell is strong. In cooking, it turns into rich, rounded depth.

Sticky rice (khao niao) is the staple. It is steamed in a cone-shaped bamboo basket and served in small woven baskets with lids, which keep it warm and soft. Isaan food is seasoned to be eaten with it: salty, sour and hot, with very little sugar.

Herbs do a great deal of the work. Mint, sawtooth coriander, dill, lemon basil, spring onions and shallots are used by the handful, along with roasted chilli flakes and khao khua, toasted sticky rice ground to a coarse, nutty powder. Raw vegetables and leaves come with almost every meal.

Larb and nam tok

Larb is the Isaan meat salad and the dish many consider the true centre of the cuisine. Minced pork, chicken, duck, beef or fish is cooked briefly, then dressed with lime juice, fish sauce or pla ra, roasted chilli flakes, khao khua, sliced shallots and plenty of mint. It is served warm or at room temperature, and it is common at celebrations and family gatherings.

Nam tok is made in a similar way, but with grilled meat cut into thin slices rather than mince. The name means waterfall, which is usually explained by the juices that drip from the meat as it grills. Nam tok moo, with grilled pork neck, and nam tok neua, with beef, are the most common versions. Both are bright, smoky and very hot.

Gai yang, sai krok and the grill

Grilling over charcoal is at the heart of Isaan cooking, and the smell of it is one of the first signs of an Isaan restaurant. Gai yang, grilled chicken, is the classic. The bird is marinated with garlic, coriander root, pepper and fish sauce or soy, often flattened between bamboo clamps, then grilled slowly until the skin is golden and the meat stays juicy.

Other grilled favourites include:

Moo yang, marinated pork, often pork neck, grilled in strips.
Sua rong hai, grilled beef brisket sliced and served with a sharp dipping sauce. The name means crying tiger.
Pla pao, whole fish packed in salt, stuffed with lemongrass and pandan leaves and grilled until the flesh steams inside its crust.
Sai krok Isaan, a sour fermented sausage of pork, cooked rice and garlic, left for a few days to develop a gentle tang before being grilled. It is served with raw cabbage, fresh ginger, bird's eye chillies and peanuts.

Jaew: the sauce on every table

Grilled food in Isaan is rarely eaten without jaew. The best-known is nam jim jaew, a thin, dark dipping sauce of fish sauce, lime juice, roasted chilli flakes, khao khua and sliced shallots, sometimes with a little tamarind. It is sour, salty, smoky and hot, and it suits almost anything off the grill.

Jaew bong is a thicker, chunkier paste of roasted chillies, shallots and garlic with pla ra, galangal and lemongrass, often with crisp pork skin. It is eaten with sticky rice and vegetables in the same way northern Thai cooks eat nam prik. Every household has its own balance, and many cooks make it fresh.

The many styles of tam

Tam simply means to pound, and in Isaan almost anything can be pounded into a salad in a clay mortar. Green papaya is the most famous base, but there are many others. The key difference is in the seasoning:

Tam Thai: the version most visitors know, seasoned with fish sauce, lime and palm sugar, with dried shrimp and roasted peanuts. It is sweeter and milder in flavour.
Tam Lao or tam pla ra: seasoned with pla ra instead of, or as well as, fish sauce, with little or no sugar. It is darker, saltier and much more pungent, and it is what many Isaan people eat at home.
Tam poo: made with small salted crabs, often combined with pla ra.
Other bases: cucumber (tam taeng), sweetcorn (tam khao pod), green beans, green mango, or khanom jeen noodles in tam sua. Tam mua is a mixed plate combining papaya salad with noodles, pickled vegetables and other additions.

Ask for less chilli (phet noi) if needed. A properly made Isaan tam can be extremely hot.

Soups: tom saep and gaeng om

Tom saep is the Isaan answer to tom yum. It is a clear, hot and sour soup, often made with pork ribs, beef or offal, flavoured with galangal, lemongrass, makrut lime leaves, lime juice, chilli and fresh herbs. It usually has no coconut milk and no chilli paste, so it tastes cleaner and sharper than the central Thai soups. The word saep means delicious in the Isaan language.

Gaeng om is another everyday dish, a thin, herbal curry-soup with plenty of dill and vegetables, often made with chicken, fish or pork. Isaan cooking also makes good use of foraged ingredients, from wild greens and mushrooms to insects such as crickets, which are fried and sold as snacks across the region.

Eating by hand, and the road to Bangkok

An Isaan meal is eaten with the fingers. Take a small piece of sticky rice from the basket with your right hand, roll it into a ball, then use it to pinch up a bite of larb, dip into jaew or soak up a little juice from the tam. Dishes are shared, raw vegetables are picked from the platter, and the meal moves at its own pace.

Isaan food reached the rest of the country with its people. Over the second half of the twentieth century, large numbers of workers moved from the northeast to Bangkok and other cities, taking jobs in construction, factories, taxis and markets. They brought their cooking with them, and roadside stalls selling gai yang, som tam and sticky rice became a fixture of city streets, often with mor lam, the folk music of Isaan, playing in the background.

Today Isaan restaurants are found all over Thailand and abroad, and many people who have never been to the northeast count som tam and gai yang among their favourite foods. The best way to understand the cuisine, though, is to go further: order the larb, try the tam with pla ra, and eat it all with your hands.