Larb Laab Larp

[RobertCollins]

I made my first Larb last night and it was wonderful. Used it as our salad followed by Ratatouille.

That didn't work. The Ratatouille tasted bland. I should have realized that next too all that spiciness.

My Larb was mostly from the Hot sour salty Sweet book except I added fresh Galangal and ground duck breast.

I wish I had made it hotter, I ended up making a quick batch of plig nam pla to up the ante. All in all, good food.

I have now read all 624 posting in this thread and need one lesson. That is will some one explain the concept and method of the two knife meat chopping? Duck thru the Kitchen aid was not the texture this dish needed.

This has been an expensive thread. Not so much the food cost but the Kaffir tree and since I was there any way the Meyer Lemon tree plus shipping, BAM, a C note gone.

It was worth it.

[echocolate]

Hm, I see a lot of lime leaves & lemongrass references...I'm surprised! Just curious, does the HSSS recipe call for lime leaves & lemongrass? I don't have the book, but I'm about to order it right now.

[KristiB50]

Hm, I see a lot of lime leaves & lemongrass references...I'm surprised!  Just curious, does the HSSS recipe call for lime leaves & lemongrass?  I don't have the book, but I'm about to order it right now.

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The HSSS ingredients are as follows:

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast and/or thighs chopped or sub ground chicken

1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots separated into rings

1 or 2 dried red Thai chiles stemmed and chopped

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

3 TBS Thai fish sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 cup packed Vietnamese coriander(rau nam) leaves or substitute mint or regular corriander torn.

3 Tbs of roasted rice powder

lettuce or Savoy cabbage

3-4 scallions chopped

[Octaveman]

Made my first Larb the other day. Being the first time and not really reading the entire 22 pages of this thread, I just did a basic one from a recipe on the Importfoods.com website. I noticed after reading here that I roasted/toasted the rice incorrectly and as a result spent WAY too much time grinding it to a powder. It's an awesome powder though. The overall volume of ingedients Sort of went ignored as I just went mostly by what tasted good to me. I couldn't load all of my pics so here are a few of them I could upload.

Minced up my own chicken breast

Minced up the mint

Final dish

[Jamie Lee]

Octaveman.. Holy Smokes! That is some Beuuuu - ti - ful larb! I like to chunk up my own protein, but I have never gotten it so fine or so even... nice job!

Stupid question for all larb lovers... do you eat larb hot, warm, room temp or cold?

[Octaveman]

Thanks Jamie, it was lots of fun beating the hell out of it too. I made mine cold since that's the only way I've had it in restaurants. Warm or hot would be nice too.

[Gabriel Lewis]

That's some fine mincing Bob. I once made larb in a hurry though, and didn't fully mince the chicken. The pieces we're still small, but some were smallish bite size chunks and I quite liked it like that. I also prefer to coarsely mince or just tear my mint, but that's a matter of preference.

The way I've taken to making my larb is to save a little bit of the chicken fat trimmed from the legs. I render that briefly in a frying pan and then fry the chicken in it with a bit of salt and sugar. When almost all the pink color is gone I add a small (few tbsps) of stock and finishing cooking. The chicken often releases a lot of juices, so depending on how wet things seem I vary the amount of stock. I find this gives a bit of richness and body to the dish, it is sort of combination between frying and Thompson's shallow poaching. I tried this with duck and it was wonderful.

I eat my larb room temperature or slightly warm from the just cooked chicken. I wouldn't recommend chilling it unless you don't dress it first, as the large amount of lime juice will do a number on your herbs and other seasonings if left for a prolonged period of time.

[iii_bake]

Hi Guys

I have been spotting many Larb recipes in magazines lately. The Jan issue of Donna Hay also covers Larb, given the Basic Recipe ( they call it BASIC recipe) as follows:

Olive Oil

Pork mince

Garlic

Grated Ginger

Small Red Chilli ( Fresh)

Lime Juice

Fish Sauce

Sugar Chopped Mint Leaves

What do you think on the ingredients and also on the publisher of ( any) recipes that can introduce any dish without the basic knowledge of the dish?

( I am not sure if this is the case of lacking the knowledge or the "borrowing" of the name to be honest)

I myself do not see the resemblance to the real larb.

iii, again

[AmritaBala]

Oh what a co-incidence...I made some Larb Moo today.....deeeeeelish!

Served it on soy noodles since the supermarket was out of rice stick noodles..arrrrr

[echocolate]

I myself do not see the resemblance to the real larb. 

iii, again

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This is terrible! (I made larb last week myself, btw) Sugar chopped mint leaves? ...whatever that is...!! Ginger? No!

[iii_bake]

I myself do not see the resemblance to the real larb. 

iii, again

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This is terrible! (I made larb last week myself, btw) Sugar chopped mint leaves? ...whatever that is...!! Ginger? No!

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Sorry...it is sugar and chopped Mint Leaves.

Still terrible though huh!

[snowangel]

No photos to share of my last larbing, but the other night, we grilled hamburgers. Diana ended up not being home for dinner, and so we ended up with two extra burgers (the two that were, ahem, medium rather than rare (my preference).

So, I crumbled those two medium burgers -- which did indeed have great char -- and larbed them. Wow.

Next time you do burgers, get some extra char on a couple of them, and take them to the medium stage and larb them. The nice char/smoke flavor. It takes larb to a new level. I've larbed (yamed?) leftover steak before, but the burger was a revelation.

[insomniac]

No photos to share of my last larbing, but the other night, we grilled hamburgers.  Diana ended up not being home for dinner, and so we ended up with two extra burgers (the two that were, ahem, medium rather than rare (my preference).

So, I crumbled those two medium burgers -- which did indeed have great char -- and larbed them.  Wow.

Next time you do burgers, get some extra char on a couple of them, and take them to the medium stage and larb them.  The nice char/smoke flavor.  It takes larb to a new level.  I've larbed (yamed?) leftover steak before, but the burger was a revelation.

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sounds like the way laab is often prepared in Laos Susan..maybe not from a deconstructed burger but the meat is more charred/crunchy outside, soft inside..makes for a very satisfying contrast in taste/texture..

[MikeHartnett]

Bringing back the larb thread from near-death to say that I made my first larb tonight, from Thompson's Thai Food. It was quite good, but I've never had anything to compare it to. Also, my knives have gotten very dull, so my mincing was a little sub-par.

I enjoyed repeating the name though. Larb larb larb.

[Sprinkles]

My mouth is watering. yum! I've made larp before but somehow it's comes out a bit too oily but I'll still eat it. Our favorite dish by far is raw larp. Yes it's raw red beef that is chopped and made just like larp but not cooked. Here in the US it's hard to find cooks who are willing to make you raw larp but we were fortunate to find a few places here in LA.

[Chris Amirault]

Oily? Say more.

[MikeHartnett]

Oily? Say more.

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Please do.

When I made mine, there was no oil at all. How are you making yours?

[snowangel]

We are headed to S. MN tomorrow for a family reunion. Potluck.

I'm bringing larb. Something a bit different from the pork, jello salads, layered salads and veggie and dip trays.

[snowangel]

The larb at the family reunion was a big hit. Not with the old-timers, but with the young folks. They gobbled it up, and were glad to see something without mayo!

[Kerry Beal]

I'm all alone up north right now - no picky mouths to feed - so tonight for the first time I made Larb. It's been on my mind for a while - but this was my first opportunity where I had most of the ingredients, and didn't have to worry about anyone else's tastebuds.

I used one of the recipes in recipeGullet. I didn't have galangal powder so I used some fresh ginger, no mint or cilantro, and I used siracha in place of chilis - but what resulted was fabulous. I mixed in some sliced up romaine and munched until I could munch no more.

I'm in lub with Larb!

[kha]

this is my own recipe of the Lab nueua. I am partly lao, partly viet, and I just love cooking traditional food.

The Lab here is lao. The only difference between lao and thai laab is the nuoc mam, which, in lao cuisine is replaced by Pa deck.

It's funny but the trigger that makes me publish a recipe is really the quality of the photo that will illustrate my recipe. Lione took yesterday this wonderful photo of my Larb, and therefore I am ready to publish it. This is a larb, that is, the traditional lao beef salad. The Thai also cook Larb, their own way, replacing Pah Dek which is really the lao signature, by Nuoc Mam.

I have found a very interesting page about Pah Dek on the Web : Lao Plah Dek

My recipe of the Larb is not the most orthodox, but this is is my experience after having tastes hundreds of different varieties of Larb.

This dish is often served along with a beef broth, greens and sticky rice (Khao Niao).

Since I was in Vientiane last week, I want mention my favorite restaurant in town. The broth that accompanies this dish is called Keng Khruang Nai (literally, "soup of stuff from the inside"). The Ban Kham restaurant which lies by the Mekong River side in Vientiane, if you ask me, is simply the best lao restaurant in Vientiane, and propose a very tasteful version of that broth. The restaurant prices are high for the country (a meal for 4 people costs 30 USD), but frankly it's worth it.

Ingredients

* 300gr of beef (sirloin, tenderloin or any tender part of the beef)

* a stalk of lemon grass

* three shallots

* 2 garlic cloves , minced

* two or three tbsp of toasted rice powder (very common ingredient that you need to preprare on your own. Simply grill without oil some glutinous rice in a stove, and when the rice seed turns golden-brown, use a blender or a mortar to obtain a nice brown powder).

* one or two red chilis

* three slices of chopped galanga

* a dozen mint leaves

* three minced young onions

* 5 leaves of saw teeth coriander (ngo gai)

* 3 branch of coriander

* 2 tbsp of lime juice

* 2 tbsp of Pah Dek or if you don't have any, Nuoc Mam

For the beef broth

* 500 gr beef brisket

* 300gr of assorted beef entrails

* one beef's bone marrow

* one onion, cut into quarters

* 5 leaves of Phak Yleuth (betel leaves)

* three young ginger slices

* salt, pepper, nuoc mam

For service

Herbs are an essential element of the recipe

* young eggplant (as shown)

* a sliced cucumber

* Lao mustard greens (phak gaht). There are not in France, but curiously, what is the closest are the tops of radishes (the leaf of red radish). These leaves are rather bitter and little de

* Salad for decoration

Directions

1. Boil 2 liters of water in a pot. Once the water is boiling add the meat cut in pieces,marrow and entrails.

2. Boil vigourously for ten minutes and discard this first broth.

3. Put water in the pot, add the meat, marrow and entails bring to boil

4. Add onion, slices of ginger, salt, pepper and nuoc mam.

5. Allow to simmer on low heat for 2 hours.

6. After the broth is done, add phak Yleuth, minced young onions, coriander leaves and allow to rest.

7. Slice the chilli, two shallots and garlic and brown in a small pan. Once the shallots and garlic have turned brown, put them in a mortar and crush until you obtain a brown paste.

8. Thinly chop the beef with a knife(a blender is really not appropriate here). In a bowl, place the beef, the chili and shallot paste, the chopped galanga, season with salt, pepper and 2 tbsp Pa Dek (or Nuoc Mam).

9. Chop thinly the lemongrass, and mix with beef. Cover and let stand 20 minutes.

10. Meanwhile coarsely chop the young onions, mint, coriander and saw teeth coriander.

11. Wash and cut the eggplants and cucumbers. It is very easy to quickly decorate the vegetables with a knife.

12. Ten minutes before serving, mix the chopped herbs and the meat, lemon juice and add a small ladle of broth. Mix well and adjust seasoning.

13. Serve with the broth and vegetables.

NB: In Asia, Larb is often served slightly cooked, mainly because of basic rules of hygiene in these country. In Europe or in the States, we don't have this problem and crude meat slightly cooked by lome juice and broth is tastier. However, if you still want to cook the meat, heat a frying pan, and when hot, add the marinated meat without oil, stirring constantly.

Larb is like a national dish in Laos, and is often eaten by the numerous river side sala (terrace) at sunset. A few beers, Tam Mak Khung (papaya salad) and Larb will nicely start the evening.

The recipe on my blog :

http://khas-kitchen.blogspot.com/2009/08/l...beef-salad.html

Tell me what you think about this recipe .

Kha

[Chris Amirault]

Larb tonight with ground chicken thighs, shallots, mint, cilantro, thai basil, aromatic ground toasted rice powder, lime, fish sauce, julienned cucumbers, bird peppers, roasted chile pepper. It went over brown rice, a planning screw-up that turned out very nicely indeed.

What is not to love about larb?

[snowangel]

Way up topic, I do think there was a discussion about proportions of lime and fish sauce. What do most folks prefer?

[Chris Amirault]

I usually go about 3:2 lime to fish sauce, but it really depends on the other ingredients. More lemon grass tonight, for example, so it was more 1:1.

Speaking of which: the last time I ground up and blanched chicken thighs I decided to do a double batch, and I froze half of the cooked chicken in a FoodSaver bag. Afer defrosting it tonight, I used it as the base for a larb, and it turned out great. Since the biggest hassle of larb is grinding and blanching the meat, seemed like a tip worth sharing.

[snowangel]

Thanks for the tip, Chris. I often buy larger packages of thighs than I need for a particular project. This would make larb a much more instant meal!