today on hot thai kitchen we are making yum naem kao tod
Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen today we're making a surprisingly much requested dish called
yum naem kao tod now it's a salad made with crispy fried rice balls and fermented sausage
and a whole bunch of herbs it's really really good now I say it's surprisingly much requested because
you can't actually find it very easily in Thai restaurants overseas in Thailand it's a it's a
strictly street food item I've only ever seen them sold on the street and what happens when you order
it is the vendor will actually make the salad to order so you can say oh I want a little extra this
not so much of that want an extra spicy and then you can kind of customize it so when you make it
at home it's really fun to kind of treat it like a salad bar where you prepare all the components
and then when your friends are over or whatever you can make you know have everybody make their
own salad so that's what we're gonna do today but before we do that let's talk about what
youngnam co-taught means yam means salad well it's a type of Thai salad nem is the type of
sour fermented sausage and then cow tot means deep fried rice so it's pretty straightforward although
this dish has it goes by a few other names so if you see a dish that sounds kind of like youngnam
co-taught it's probably the same idea perhaps with a slight variation so let's first take a
look at the most important part of this dish which is the Cal tot or the D fried rice balls
here are the ingredients 4 cups of cooked rice 3 tablespoons of red curry paste 3 to 4 kaffir lime
leaves Center rib removed and then lead julienne 1/2 a cup of shredded coconut meat two teaspoons
of fish sauce one teaspoon of sugar 1 egg half a cup of rice flour and a little less than half
a cup of water hey so the rice balls are very simple if you're familiar with the Italian add
on teeny or risotto ball same kind of idea so what we want to do first in here is get our basically
mix everything together we'll give that simple so it's not much to show so this the red curry
paste I'm just using store-bought today you can make your own if you'd like fish sauce now I'm
starting with 2 teaspoons as you know every time you work with a curry paste the level of salt in
the curry paste will differ I find 2 teaspoons a good place to start when we go to make the
salad we'll add the fish sauce extra so we can adjust there so sugar just went in kaffir lime
leaves going in make sure you cut them very very finely because they are not very comfortable to
eat if they're big ok shredded coconut meat this stuff is not the dry shredded coconut that you see
in a regular grocery store this is fresh I we're not fresh but it hasn't been dried I usually get
this frozen it'll be called grated coconut if you cannot find this you can substitute dry shredded
coconut what I do is I just rehydrate it a little bit with some hot water just so you achieve the
same amount of moisture because essentially it's the same same thing the only thing is if
you get the dry coconut make sure it's not the sweetened one because that'll throw everything
off and then one egg going in there now I like to mix everything in here first before I put the rice
in because then I only have to worry about mixing the rice rather than trying to get all this other
stuff mixed as well ok so now that that's all mixed up yeah you're going to go ahead with your
rice and the rice is 4 cups of cooked now I kept it warm because it's not good to use old or cold
rice for this because when it's cold and old the grains don't stick together very well and then the
form it won't form balls it'll just kind of fall apart so and if you have you're using old Rice's
make sure you reheat everything back up before you use it so I'm using four cups now rice has
a raw to cooked ratio of about one to three so in order to get four cups of rice if you cook
about one and a half cup of raw rice you should get at least that much it's good to know when
you're trying to cook rice for a lot of people okay and now you're just going to mix it all up
and don't worry about being careful not to mush the rice if it gets mushed up a little bit it's
okay it'll actually help your balls stick together if some other rice gets mushed along the way okay
now at this point you can taste it if you'd like to see if you want to adjust anything if you are
afraid of eating raw eggs you can microwave it a little bit make sure that cooked before you
taste it okay now we just have to form these into balls now you can do this with bare hands if your
hands are clean but remember this is spicy so if you're going to do with bare hands just be
careful where you put them afterwards so I don't have any gloves on me so I'm just going to use
these plastic bags that I brought from Thailand you're going to Thailand you know they sell food
and they put them in here so I use them to grab things like this they're usually round
and they're about I guess a size of a plum roughly you can make them round which would take a little
more effort but it's gonna be more quote-unquote authentic because that's how they're sold on the
street hey that's not very round but you get the idea but the rounder you make it the more
oil it's going to take because round things are deep so if you want to use less oil you can do
kind of pucks you can make it bigger or smaller it's not that big of a deal the only thing you
need to be aware of is the bigger they are the less crispy bits you're going to have because
we're going to fry these on the outside of be crispy and the inside will be soft and the way
surface and surface area to volume ratio works is that the bigger is the less surface area you
have for the volume so just something to keep in mind oh by the way keep them really tight so that
when you go to fry them they don't fall apart on you so just press press press really really hard
so we're going to fry our rice balls now so I'm going to make a batter of just simply rice flour
and slightly less water now the batter isn't absolutely necessary it's actually optional
whether you want to do it not sometimes I get lazy I don't bother with it there is one benefit to
having a batter and that is if you fry the if you fry the rice balls without the batter if you've
got any sort of bits of rice that's sticking up that's not completely flushed with the with the
surface it'll get very fried and then that bit is going to get so crunchy that it's almost hard
and a bit uncomfortable to eat so when you dip it in the batter the batter will sort of form a
protective layer and prevent that from happening and it will even out any you know unsmooth nests
any dips and valleys if you're going to skip the batter just make sure you smooth out the
rice really well before you go to fry them so the consistency will be quite thin we don't want any
sort of you know it's not tempura just a little bit of coating it should almost be invisible when
you go to finish it in the end yes that's just so oil is going to be at 350 as per usual I forgot my
thermometer today so what I usually do is I just throw in bits of rice in there and if it starts
bubbling right away then I'm around that ballpark figure so I'm going to go in with this one and if
I dip it and then immediately it's not bubbling then I can quickly take it out it's not a big it's
not a big deal it's a bit low right now I'm going to let it go anyway and then wait a bit before I
put in my next one it's not bad it's a bit on the low side it's not as excited as I wanted it to be
so these are going to take about 8 minutes so they take a long time there's nothing really for you to
cook other than perhaps the eggs but that doesn't take very long but you're really going for getting
a nice golden crispy outside so that's really all you got to look for if it's nice and crispy
and a beautiful brown color then your usually my experience takes about eight to ten minutes
mmm they smell so good okay so these are our beautiful beautifully fried rice balls or cow
Todd just wanted to point out differences between the ones that I battered and the
ones that I didn't the ones that I did not batter looks almost nicer but you can feel that if there
are any rice grains that are sticking out they feel a little hard whereas these ones are all
smooth there's no hard bits anywhere so it's up to you whether that's an issue or not both
ways work I should point out though that if you don't batter them they cook quite a bit
faster because you know there's less stuff to penetrate so maybe six minutes is about when
they're going to be done so then we're going to let this sit for now while we get our salad bar
already so here is what you will need name or sour fermented sausage julienned ginger thinly
sliced shallots roasted peanuts chopped cilantro chopped green onions chopped sawtooth coriander
this is optional and in case you're not familiar with it this is what it looks like chili flakes
slime deuce fish sauce and some crisp lettuce for wrapping so first let's take a look at our
sausage or hero so this is my name or my sour fermented sausage and that's basically raw pork
that has been fermented with some seasoning and some pork skin and as the pork sits the bacteria
in the pork produces lactic acid which is why it's sour and if it sits for long enough there's enough
lactic acid that it renders the environment too acidic for disease-causing bacteria ie botulism
to grow so you won't get sick when you eat it now a lot of people make their own I bought this
now obviously there's the sensitive food safety issue here so if you're going to make your own
please be careful nowadays they also sell NAMM making powder which contains a starter bacterial
culture and also sodium nitrite which will inhibit botulism it's up to you whether or not you want to
make it yourself but I'm going to buy it and leave it to the experts so what you want to do is just
break this up for the salad bowl and you can use as much of it as you like and then you can see the
stringy bits here are just pork skin you can also just chop it but it looks a little more rustic if
you mangle it up obviously you can have as much or as little of this stuff as you like I'm just
going to do this for now and I'll deal with the other one later all right let's mix everything
together so you want to first start out with rice balls just a couple of is good and then
I'm going to smash it I know you're thinking all bad work that's how I felt too the first time but
alas one's got to do what one's got to do okay and now you're going to go in with our NAMM here I'm
just going to use it all and then this is the fun part you get to pick everything some green onions
however much you like there's no right or wrong some cilantro obviously you cilantro haters out
there no need some ginger I like quite a bit of ginger actually shallots not too much for me some
sawtooth coriander if you can't find it no worries you can also use mint mint is actually really good
in this as well some chili flakes to make it a little extra spicy peanuts oh and there looks
good already doesn't it and then you're going to do a big squeeze a lime we're going to taste
all this so a little bit of extra fish sauce not too much and then you're going to mix it up and
then taste it mix it up quite well a little more Chile's a little extra lime and some more peanuts
all right so here's how you eat it there mmm that looks so good okay I forgot to mention I'm missing
one kind of important ingredient here which is extra pork skin and it's basically cooked pork
skin that they've sliced thinly it's already in the name but you will like to add extra of it I
can't find it here and I really didn't want to go through the process of making it myself plus I'm
not a big fan of it so it's alright lettuce so when you go to buy it they'll also always serve
it with some fresh lettuce and I'm using green leaf lettuce which is typical you can use butter
lettuce is great romaine anything that's crisp and fresh whatever you like whatever you have
is perfect you just take this piece I don't know something that will comfortably fit into
your mouth obviously put some of it in make sure you've got everything you want in there wrap it up
that was really good I mean it's sour and salty and fresh and crunchy and Munchie with all the
nuts in there and you know it's even better you have to try this make it enough so you
have a leftover for tomorrow morning heat it up a little bit fry a nice egg if you're like over-easy
that's even better put the egg on top mix the whole thing up it makes the best breakfast so
that's all for today if you want the recipe for this dish you can visit hot hsn.com if you enjoy
the show please click to subscribe and I will see you next time for your next delicious Kylie