Thai Green Papaya Salad aka Som Tam

ummi77's Note:

Definitely a must have for Thai food fans. I always serve it during BBQ and it is verrrryyy delicious.

• Total Time: 20 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 0 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 300 g julienned really green unripe papayas
• 3 tomatoes, wedges
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon dried shrimp, fried with little oil
• 8 fresh birds eye chiles, sliced
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar or 1 tablespoon palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon roasted peanuts, pounded coarsely
• 1 tablespoon roasted cashew nuts
• fresh long beans, cut into 2 inch
• cabbage

Directions:

1. Pound garlic until fine.
2. Add garlic, lime juice, fish sauce,brown sugar in a bowl.
3. Mix well.
4. Add papaya, tomato wedges and chili into a big mixing bowl.
5. Stir in the garlic mixture into papaya bowl (item 3).
6. Adjust seasoning if necessary.
7. It should be mixture of sweet, sour and salty.
8. Toss in dried shrimp, groundnut and cashew nut.
9. Served with long beans, cabbage or other raw vegetables.

Reviews

[Phoenix Food Queen]

Very good. Having grown up with best friends from Thailand, I ate this daily and learned to make this the traditional way of the Thai people. It best to have large mortar and pestle. Then the only things I do suggest is that for the most part, Som Tom is made with pickled mud fish sauce or shrimp paste versus the fish sauce. Also, we usually use cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes. We normally leave out the cashews. This is very good recipe though. Like all recipes, there are as many versions of Som Tom as there are soups! Many times you can use mango or cucumber or even carrots instead of Papaya! One of my all time favorites!! I love it with sticky rice best of all!

[Chef #507714]

This is exactly how it should be done. Although, I did substitute chili garlic sauce for the birds eye chilies.

[Garlic Chick]

I made this recently with some pad thai and really enjoyed it. I made per the recipe except used regular fresh green beans, not long beans. I had a hard time finding the dried shrimp at the local Asian market because they were in the frozen section! I found this to be more flavorful the next day and will make it a day ahead in the future. Thanks for posting, ummi77.