Cold, crisp and refreshing this salad is a main staple during hot summer months. The combination of fresh lime zing, salty fish sauce, brown sugar and hot thai chilis round out this salad making it exciting to eat. Fresh and healthy, give me more!
Ingredients
Sauce:
2 tbsp garlic, about 4 large garlic cloves
6 tbsp garlic, about 4 large garlic cloves
6 tbsp dried shrimp
1 cup palm sugar, grated on box grater or brown sugar
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 cup fish sauce
Salad:
1 cup roasted salted peanuts
20 snake or green beans, cut into 2 inch pieces and smashed with a knife
3 cups grape tomatoes, cut in half
4 cups green papaya, shredded or using the Kom Kom Miracle Zig Zag Julienne blade tool
1/2 cup Thai basil (Italian is ok, too)
Crush peanuts: Place peanuts in a mortar and pestle. Pound lightly to break them up into largish pieces, not into powder. Transfer to bowl.
Garlic and chili paste: Place garlic and chili in the mortar. Pound into a paste. Add shrimp and pound to crush them – no need to grind them to a paste.
Dressing: Stir in palm sugar, lime and fish sauce until sugar dissolves. Pour Dressing into a large bowl.
Bruise snake beans: Add snake beans to mortar (in batches if needed). Pound to bruise, split and soften (they are raw, so they need to be bashed to soften). Add to Dressing.
Crush tomatoes: Grab handfuls of tomato, crush with your hands then add into the bowl.
Add papaya: Add papaya and 3/4 of the peanuts. Toss well with 2 wooden spoons or tongs.
Serve immediately: Once everything is coated in dressing, immediately pile up onto plates. Spoon over some dressing (there will be a bit of dressing still left in the bowl, that’s normal). Garnish with Thai basil leaves, sprinkle with remaining peanuts. Serve immediately.
Notes:
Birds eye chilies – Authentic Green Papaya Salad is quite spicy. Very spicy! 6 chillies with the seeds in is the average strength of spiciness you get in Thailand and authentic Thai restaurants here in Sydney. Feel free to dial it back (1 chili would be quite mild).
Dried shrimp – Small shrimp that are sun-dried, they are an ingredient used in Asian cooking to add savory flavor. It tastes like concentrated shrimp (prawns). Sold at Asian grocery stores (small, light packet, not refrigerated, so suitable for online order). Can’t find it? If you skip the dried shrimp, you may find this dressing a bit one-dimensional. It is still delicious without it!
Palm sugar – You can purchase this pre grated in bags on Amazon. Substitute – Brown sugar.
Snake beans – Long beans that are a bit harder than ordinary green beans. Used raw in this dish, so it’s bruised to soften. Substitute green beans / French beans.
Green papaya – Unripened papaya. Find it at Thai or Vietnamese grocery stores. Make sure the outside skin is dark green and when you cut open the seeds are white. You can use them if they are still green on the outside and if the inside has turned pale orange-as long as it has a firm enough texture for grating.
To prepare: peel the dark green skin off using a standard vegetable peeler (the skin is quite soft), then cut in half and remove the seeds using a spoon. Now finely shred using a julienne shredder. You can use a box grater in a pinch-it just changes texture a bit.
Substitutes – The best substitute is green mango, another unripened fruit used in salads in Thai cuisine but also an ingredient that would need to be sourced from an Asian store! Prepare and use in the same way.
Thai Basil – It tastes like normal basil with a hint of aniseed and minty flavor.
Best substitute: Ordinary Italian basil.
Serve immediately – This is important because the green papaya continues to wilt and leach liquid. This will dilute the flavor of the Dressing and the green papaya goes soggy.
Make ahead – You can make the salad ahead by preparing all the raw ingredients undressed. Shredded papaya keeps extremely well in an airtight zip-lock bag in the fridge for days, with no discolouration or degradation of quality.
