Green papaya salad in Thailand

Green papaya salad is one of the important dishes in Thailand. This is mainly popular among Thai women. This is a northeastern Thai dish is eatable with sticky rice. The other side dishes are beef salad, laab, bamboo shoot salad, etc. Two most popular green papaya salads are best accompanied with salted crab or shrimp. When dried shrimp or peanuts are added, the salad is named as som tum Thai and when it is added with crab, this is called som tum pbooh. The other ingredients remain same in both the cases.

The ingredients can be summarized as one or one and half tablespoons palm sugar, three fourth lime, 2 cups green papaya, five cherry tomatoes, one and one and half tablespoon fish sauce, two chili peppers, one tablespoon dried shrimp, six green beans, one clove garlic, and two tablespoon toasted peanuts which is optional.

If you are preparing vegetarian som tum, dried shrimp should be avoided. You can use fish sauce or soy sauce in place of that. Sometimes lime can be replaced with tamarind and palm sugar can be replaced with regular sugar. The balance of lime juice, fish sauce, peppers, and palm sugar should be properly maintained. In Thailand shredded green papaya is available in every supermarket. Even if you are getting whole papaya, you can peel it and grate it with cheese grater with medium and large sized holes. The seeds should be discarded if there are any. Green papaya salad is usually prepared with the help of a clay mortar, spatula and a wooden pestle.

At first the clove or garlic should be smashed. Green beans and half cherry tomatoes are added afterwards. Chili peppers should be crushed and added to the salad. It should be followed by adding green papaya, toasted peanuts, dried shrimp, fish sauce, palm sugar and lime juice. The pestle is used to push up the mixture in the mortar while spatula is used to push down in order to mix well the mixture. Not much effort is required to prepare the green papaya salad so just go for it and relish it with yours friends and family.