Larb Moo (Isaan Minced Pork Salad)
Warm minced pork tossed with lime, fish sauce, chilli flakes, toasted rice powder, shallots and fresh mint.
- Region
- Isaan (Northeastern Thailand)
- Condiments
- Fish Sauce
- Vegetables
- Bird’s Eye Chilli, Yard-long Beans, Thai Shallots, Dried Red Chillies, Mint, Sawtooth Coriander, Coriander Leaves
- Fruits
- Lime
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp uncooked sticky rice (or jasmine rice), for the toasted rice powder
- 400 g minced pork
- 3 tbsp water
- 2½ tbsp fish sauce
- 3–4 tbsp lime juice
- 1–2 tsp roasted chilli flakes
- ½ tsp sugar (optional)
- 4 small shallots, thinly sliced
- 3 spring onions, sliced
- 1 large handful mint leaves
- 1 small handful coriander or sawtooth coriander, chopped
- To serve: sticky rice, cabbage, long beans, cucumber
Instructions
Larb is the national dish of Laos and the heart of Isaan cooking: minced meat dressed while still warm with lime, fish sauce and chilli, and finished with handfuls of herbs and khao khua, toasted ground rice. The rice powder is the secret. It gives larb its nutty smell and soaks up the dressing.
Method
- Make the toasted rice powder (khao khua): toast the rice in a dry pan over medium heat, shaking often, for 8–10 minutes until deep golden and fragrant. Let it cool, then grind it coarsely in a mortar or spice grinder. It should feel like coarse sand.
- Put the pork and water in a pan over medium heat, without oil. Stir and break up the pork for 4–5 minutes until just cooked through. Larb pork is poached in its own juices, not fried.
- Take the pan off the heat. While the pork is still warm, add the fish sauce, lime juice, chilli flakes and sugar if using, and stir well.
- Add 2 tbsp of the rice powder, the shallots, spring onions, mint and coriander, and toss gently.
- Taste: it should be sour, salty and hot in that order. Adjust with more lime, fish sauce or chilli.
- Pile onto a plate, sprinkle with a little more rice powder, and serve straight away with sticky rice and raw vegetables.
Cook’s tips
- Make a bigger batch of khao khua and keep it in a jar. It lasts for weeks and goes into nam tok, jaew and tom saep too.
- Larb gai (chicken) is made exactly the same way with minced chicken thigh.
Aroy Mak Mak
Aroy Mak Mak is a small team writing about the food of Thailand and its neighbours: recipes you can cook at home, guides to the ingredients behind them, and places worth travelling for. The name means "very delicious" in Thai. Every recipe on the site lists its ingredients, timings and method in full, explains the techniques that matter, and suggests substitutes for ingredients that are hard to find outside Thailand. The guides to regions, condiments, vegetables and fruits explain what things are, how they are used and how to buy and store them. Place pages are researched from current sources, including the latest Michelin Guide Thailand, official websites and maps, and give addresses, opening hours and what to order. Where a detail could not be confirmed, it is left out rather than guessed.