This Papaya Salad is like a window to my soul. It’s represents both my Thai roots and love for cooking. My mom can whip this up out of thin air. Seriously, she just materializes the ingredients and suddenly there is a delicious, perfectly diced, spicy, flavor bomb of a salad waiting for you. Her chopping technique is not for the faint of heart. Somehow, she has all of her fingers. Please exercise caution! I wouldn’t be able to count how many times a year we eat this. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
You will need:
- 4-5 garlic cloves
- 3-4 dried Thai bird chilis (or dried chiles de arbol)
- 5 (ish) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 4-5 lime wedges
- 1/2 firm tomato, cut into wedges
- 4-5 tablespoons fish sauce (or to taste)
- 1/2 green (unripe) papaya, peeled and shredded (2-3 cups)
Instructions:
- Mash garlic cloves and chilis. Mom is using a mortar and pestle, but use your mashing tool of choice. Add more chilis for more spice!
- Add halved cherry tomatoes and lime, palm sugar and fish oil. Continue to mash.
- Mix in chopped papaya and give it a final mashing.
- I love eating this with a side of pork rinds!
Watching this filled my heart with joy. Your mom is amazing.
Chrissy, love Yai! Went to Thailand in January 2019 and kind of learned how to make the papaya salad (until they pushed me away and did it for me). Will definitely give this a try at home myself with two hand full of chili!
Couple errors in the recipe- no link for the mortar & pestle just some notes and recipe mentions palm sugar but that’s not in the ingredient list….I’ve been cursed as pain in the ass proofreader 😐
I LOVE YOUR MOM! she brings me so much joy, reminds me of my mom, but she’s in Indonesia… far away
How do you shred the papaya like that?
she crazy
Your mom is adorable!
1. Could we have a video of her chopping the papaya, the small picture in picture video of this looked interesting
2. I just came back from Bangkok and the Papaya salad had dried shrimp and peanuts, is that just a different version or is there a reason why your mom doesn’t use dried shrimp or peanuts?
we do use dried shrimp if we have it on hand, but didn’t this day and it’s great either way! also for a lot of people, the mere thought of dried shrimp freaks them out so we didn’t want people to not make something that is so awesome just because of the shrimp. <3
I am so in love with your mum.❤️
Missing shrimp paste! Need that weird flavor included lol. I get you dont want to scare people away but feel like it would be very bland without it!