hi welcome again to hot Thai kitchen now I'm willing to bet a lot of money that whatever Thai
restaurant youth frequent there's an item on the appetizer section called larb and that's exactly
what we're making today now a larb is a dish from northeastern Thailand which is notorious for
having very very spicy food and it's a salad made of ground meat today we're using pork and that's
the most common form in Thailand but you can have duck larb meat with duck chicken beef or even fish
so we're gonna start with toasted ground rice and that's what's in this pestle mortar here earlier
I've toasted some glutinous white rice long grain and just put it in a dry pan medium heat and just
toast it tossed sink tossing it quite often until it's nice and golden brown and they're gonna start
to pop kind of like popcorn kind of cool actually but when that's done I let it cool a little bit so
it doesn't steam up into your pestle and mortar and then it just yammering away now if you don't
have a pestle and mortar you can also use your coffee grinder that works really well just be
careful not to over pulverize it until it's really powdery because you don't want it and you'll kind
of want that little grittiness and if you don't have a coffee grinder what I've done before I got
this was I put it in a ziplock bag laid flat on a sturdy surface and just go at it with a hammer
yeah just your regular hardware store hammer works just as well but I like this stuff so we've got
that and it's very very toasty smells so good it's gonna be so good in the salad next we're gonna
prep our pork now I have here a pan with simmering water so we're gonna with just a little bit of
water okay and then just let that come to a simmer and I have here some ground pork quitely and you
don't have to have it extra lean if you like a little bit of fat because I'm not adding any extra
fat in the salads very very healthy I'm gonna season it with a tiny bit of fish sauce it's a
splash now if you've seen my show before you know how I feel about fish sauce absolutely love it it
is Thai people don't use salt we use fish sauce and it acts more than just saltiness ex-players
okay so it's come to a simmer now notice I only have a little bit we do not want to brown this we
just want to cook it and so the water prevents it from browning it creates steam so we're surface M
I almost poaching it actually now in Thailand we eat a lot of pork in fact I dare say that
growing up I probably ate more pork than I ate any other kind of meat but in Thai restaurants
in North America here they turn a lot of things that are usually pork into chicken dishes such as
la la the most common kind of love is not more which is that pork but in Thai restaurants you
most of the time see black guy which is chicken same as satay in Thai restaurants you always see
chicken satay you go to Thailand you will never find chicken satay it's always pork satay and I
think it tastes just as good if not better so I make it the real way okay and we're just gonna
let this cook and in the meantime we're going to prep our shallots I have here one big shower you
know shallots come to sort of like have two bulbs connected to each other I'm using two cutting each
one and a half and really find these slice your shallots Chucho I don't want large pieces it's
really quite pungent okay actually one looks good for the amount but I have to Scott you're
gonna pour as soon as you see that all the pink is gone stop cooking take it off heat right away
because the longer you keep it there the tougher it will become ok that looks good and you always
have to think about residual you once you turn off the heat you stop the cooking of something
there's heat there that's gonna keep cooking it so you almost want to pull it out a little tiny bit
early and let the residual heat cook the rest of your meat so I have that poured in our mixing bowl
and we're going to add our shallots to that and the heat from the pork is gonna wilt the shallots
a little bit we take away some of that raw onion Eve flavor but you also don't you don't want to
sweat your shallots I mean it it after all that is this out it's a warm salad okay now on top
of that we're going to add some cilantro that we're going to find these Shifa mud shift vinod
is just a fancy cooking term that means find me slice into thin strips okay a lot of French chefs
like to use fancy terms for simple things and at culinary school we have to learn all these
words take two guesses on just like English lies okay so cilantro and mint going in that
next we're going to put in our seasoning which is about two tablespoons of fish sauce we'll see how
that goes we might probably two and a half and same amount of lime so equal part yeah well you
know in Thailand it's always equal parts lime and fish sauce but I find that the limes in Thailand
are always they're smaller but there's more sour so I found that since I moved here I've had to
put more lime than I do fish sauce just because it's more diluted and we have some chili powder
and this is be generous the chili powder that I have here isn't that spicy so I'm adding quite
a lot you can use back in Thailand used to make our own ground chili just take chili some fresh
chili roast it until it's dry or just let it sit out in the Sun until it's completely dry and then
just grind it up in a pestle and mortar or when we were a little more civilized we actually had
coffee crab spice grinder as we use okay next our delicious aromatic toasty rice so that's the kind
of consistency that you want you want it ground but you don't want it to be completely completely
powdery because otherwise it just kind of turns the whole sauce kind of gooey okay it smells so
good I want more of it okay quick toss and now now that's spicy and it's a lot of meat and it's
always good to serve something that like that with some fresh crunchy vegetables so I have
here some iceberg lettuce that I'm going to once again ship panade you can make you should that's
a little bigger this time I'm going to grab some mint because mint really comes out quite strongly
in the salad and I always I'm a firm believer in your garnish representing the flavors of your
salad and not putting you know chopped parsley over absolutely everything there now not done
we don't eat lab by itself we'd love with sticky rice so next we're gonna make some sticky rice