Green Papaya Salad

Save

Yield: 1 - 3 Servings
Prep Time: 5 minutes

Recipe Categories Snacks & Starters Soups & Salads Vegan

Green papaya salad is, by far, the most popular dish among Thai people. It’s most commonly portioned for one person, but is also easily shared as an appetizer between two or three. The simplicity, robust flavors, sharpness, and balance of this salad make it a perfect ambassador for Thai cuisine, and it highlights the full spectrum of Thai flavors: hot, sour, sweet, and salty. There are countless regional variants of this dish, but this is the classic version, also known as som dtam thai.

Using a mortar and pestle, pound the chilies and garlic together into a fine paste, using a pinch of salt as an abrasive. Add the palm sugar, dried prawns, and roasted peanuts, and pound everything together until it becomes a coarse paste. Add the tamarind water, lime juice, and fish sauce to complete the dressing, and stir with the pestle until fully incorporated.
Add the green papaya, long beans, cherry tomatoes, and carrot and pound lightly to bruise and soften them so they can absorb the dressing, then toss to combine with the paste. Alternatively, if your mortar and pestle isn’t large enough to handle all the ingredients, you can use a pestle with a large mixing bowl for the vegetables. The finished salad should taste sour, salty, lightly sweet, and hot.

For the Tamarind Water

Cut a brick of tamarind pulp into small pieces and soak overnight in water.

The next day, use your hands to massage the water into the tamarind and loosen it up. Once the water is well saturated with tamarind, pass it through a strainer and keep only the tamarind water. Store it in the fridge for up to 1 week. Tamarind water goes rancid quickly so don’t make too much at once.

It’s common for most Thai kitchens to have more than one kind of mortar and pestle. For this recipe, look for a clay mortar with a wooden pestle or a wooden mortar and pestle combination. They’re commonly used by Thai street vendors specifically for making green papaya salad, and they prevent you from overpounding the vegetables while still bruising them enough to absorb the dressing.
Prepressed tamarind water is available in some Asian specialty markets. Because it has to be shelf-stable, it must be pasteurized; as a result, it tastes mustier than freshly pressed tamarind water.