Chicken Larb

Very good Did change the recipe Chopped garlic and ginger and green onions Stir fried above and added ground turkey Take off heat Add lime & nam pla mixture Add cilantro

Easy and delicious.

I have a much much better recipe. Fist off where is the lemongrass? 2 Tb of rice, toasted then pulverized is used to thicken stock (add 1/4 cup). 1/2 a cup makes this really gritty and unpleasant. So many other improvements. Skip this recipe and find a better one.

How is nam pla (Thai fish sauce) different from Vietnamese fish sauce?

The Larb I learned from Lao friends was done a bit differently - skin some chicken breasts and mince the meat. Stir fry the chicken skin until fat has rendered out, then dice it. Add the raw chicken meat and the skin to the wok and stir fry in the fat until done, Then you can remove to a bowl and add the other ingredients. This was always served with sticky rice and a condiment (nam jeow) made with sliced serrano chilies and green onions charred in foil, then mashed in a mortar with fish sauce.

Thai stepmom makes larb gai all the time. Mix fish sauce, lime juice, chili powder, and glutinous rice powder in a bowl and let sit. For Bangkok style larb, use enough water to poach the chicken, then strain. For Lao style (her fav), cook some crushed or minced galangal, ginger, garlic, and lemongrass in hot oil before cooking the chicken (do not brown, just cook enough to be done). Add the red onion/shallot and green onion immediately while still hot. Pour over dressing, add herbs.

I didn’t add water to the ground chicken and it came out lovely. I added 1 or 2 smashed and diced Thai chilies to the ground chicken while it cooked. Make sure you grind the rice really well as it’s a bit crunchy. It’s a good recipe.

This recipe was confusing and not particularly clear (boiling water??? For what? I just ignored the directions entirely.) Fortunately, I've had chicken larb before and know what it should look and taste like, so the ingredients were a good start in helping me make an amazing larb. Please take the other reader suggestions of using ginger, mint and shallots in the recipe, and doubling up on the Thai fish sauce, lime juice and sugar. The result is amazing. But DO NOT follow the exact directions.

I see in the photo that the author/cook does only a fair approximation of authenticity in the cookware used. In most Thai shops I've visited and seen larb and yum prepared, an old, bent and ill-shaped aluminum pot is used-- one that would be an embarrassment in most people's western kitchens. Similarly, an old rusty steel wok that can be kept hanging outside in some rainy place would be quite authentic, and the rice can in fact be burned slightly. Just two tips for authenticity, if you will.

This recipe is a good start, but I agree with the cooks who said to add more fish sauce and lime juice, I ended up doubling both. I increased the sugar by a half teaspoon, with no oil the dressing needs the sugar to round it out. I also used considerably more lettuce, I used a head of red butter lettuce in addition to the romaine, and I added 15 mint leaves and two thinly sliced cucumbers. For the rice, I toasted 1/4 cup of jasmine rice but didn’t end up using quite all of it. It was a huge hit!

I took some liberties with this one because I wanted a big, easy dinner salad. Added equal amounts of chopped basil & mint, along with the cilantro. Tossed all the greens with the onions. Made a 2x portion of dressing with the chiles (dried chiles de arból), lime juice, fish sauce & sugar. Cooked the ground chicken with a splash of the dressing. Added about 2 c. of thin rice noodles (Thai stick), instead of the rice powder, & 1/2 c. chopped peanuts. Tossed it all together with the dressing. Yum!

You've got to have sticky rice with this.

Made this recipe and the quantity of rice powder looked like far too much for the quantity of chicken. I followed the recipe anyway (Mark Bittman hasn't steered me wrong yet!) and should have trusted my instincts - it was indeed too much rice powder, and it gave the chicken an unpleasant, chalky texture.