I love this salad for the way the simple ingredients interplay. My Thai friend told me that you can judge how good a cook is from their Som Tam’s. The dish is normally cooked in summer.
All the vegetables used in this salad are non-starchy, so besides the dried prawn, everything is actually quite healthy and useful for weight maintenance or weight loss. But I love my dried prawns in there. So, if you are on a diet, leave those out, and the salad will still taste awesome.
In Thailand, there are four main kinds of salads: Yam, Tam, Lap and Phla. The somtam is a ‘tam’ salad, where things are being pounded in a mortar. Therefore, to make this (and other yam salads), it is best to use a mortar, something like this fella:
This recipe is from my Thai cook teacher. Chef Ton was the Culinary Champion in Thailand in 2008. Her food is the best I have ever tasted in Thailand. In all ‘tam’ salads, the sauce is pretty standard mix of fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar. Everybody has a different preference, so this combination in the recipe is mine. Some people like it sweeter, others saltier and yet others more sour. Adjust according to your taste.
This is how a green papaya looks like, this is the pear shape version, there is also the long, slim ones. Those are sweeter:
green papaya
Thai Papaya Salad (Som Tam )
Ingredients
- 100 g Shredded Green Papaya
- 1 clove Garlic
- 1 String bean cut into sections
- 5 Cherry or Grape Tomatoes
- 1/2 Birdeye chili
- 20 Dried Shrimps soaked and then dried
- 1 Tablespoons Roasted Peanuts
- 1 teaspoon Fried Shallots
Salad Sauce
- 1 Tbsp Fish Sauce
- 2 Tbsp Palm Sugar
- 1 Tbsp Lime Juice
Vietnamese version
- A handful of mint leaves
- A handful of basil leaves
- Sliced boiled pork belly
- Sliced boil prawns
Instructions
- Just pound all the ingredients in the mortar in this order: Garlic, chilies, string beans, papaya, dried shrimps and peanuts.
- Add the tomatoes and pound gently.
- Mix the sauce and pour over the salad.
- Toss and serve immediately.
