Khao tod, also known as crispy rice salad, is one of my favorite dishes from Korat. My mom would make it as a treat for me and my siblings on the weekend, and we’d pile spoonfuls into cabbage leaves and eat them like tiny tacos. I still make it all the time for Chrissy. With every bite, you get crunchy bits of fried rice, tangy lime, refreshing herbs, the snap of raw ginger, a touch of heat from the chiles and the roasted peanuts.
Most of the work is rolling the seasoned rice into balls and frying them. I like my rice extra crunchy so I flatten the balls into discs to get more crispy edges. Traditionally it is made with naem, which is a fermented Thai sausage, but I use Spam (yes, I love Spam!) cooked until tender with garlic and lime juice to give it a savory-tangy taste. But if you don’t like Spam, you can also substitute cooked ground pork, or crumbled Thai Sour Sausage.
Reprinted from The Pepper Thai Cookbook Copyright © 2021 by Vilailuck Teigen. Photographs copyright © 2021 by Jenny Huang. Published by Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House.
