The classic Thai green papaya salad: crisp, vibrant, and sweet-and-sour.
Walk down any bustling street in Thailand and you will almost certainly hear the steady thud of wooden pestles hitting clay mortars as vendors whip up their own versions of som tam, each finished with a lip-smacking sweet-and-sour dressing. The variations are endless.
While traveling in Thailand, I was lucky enough to join a local chef for a cooking class, and green papaya salad was on the menu!
The best known version is Thai som tam, the shredded green papaya salad from central Thailand that has become synonymous with the words “som tam”.
The dish mixes wonderfully crisp green papaya with fresh chilies, garlic, chewy dried shrimp, roasted peanuts, long beans, and tomatoes, then coats everything in a sweet-and-sour sauce made from fish sauce, lime juice, and palm sugar.
It’s everything you could want in a salad: refreshing, light, and quick to make.
How to make Som Tam
“Tam”-style pounded salads are a cornerstone of Lao and Isan (northeastern Thailand) cooking, and they have become a grab-and-go staple across Thailand and at almost any Lao or Thai restaurant worldwide.
Although all som tam salads rely on the same basic method (see below), the ingredients and flavors can vary widely from one region to the next.
In Laos and Isan, som tam leans toward salty and sour rather than sweet, calling for pla ra – a fermented fish sauce known as padaek in Laos – along with salted crabs and pickled plums.
Here we focus on the central-Thai style of som tam, which strikes a careful balance between sour and sweet thanks to a generous dose of palm sugar in the dressing. Sweetness and saltiness may shift from one version to another, but sourness, or “som”, is non-negotiable.
The other essential tool for tam-style salads is a mortar and pestle, ideally a wooden pestle and a clay or wooden mortar. Pounding lightly bruises the ingredients, coaxing out their juices while preserving their crunch.
But don’t worry, I will give you two methods in the recipe: one with a mortar and one without, so everyone is happy.
Som Tam – Easy Thai Green Papaya Salad
Equipment
- 1 mortier
Ingredients
- 200 g shredded green papaya soaked in ice water for 10–15 minutes to crisp up
- 2 cloves garlic
- a few Thai bird’s-eye chilies to taste
- 1.5 tablespoon palm sugar
- 3 yardlong beans cut into 5 cm lengths
- 3 tablespoons roasted peanuts
- 1 heaping tablespoon small dried shrimp roughly chop if they’re large
- 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
- 2 teaspoons tamarind juice
- 1.5 tablespoon fish sauce
- 1 small tomato, cut into wedges
Instructions
- Peel the green papaya.
- Score it lengthwise with a knife.
- Slice crosswise to create fine shreds.
- Cut the yardlong beans into 5 cm segments.
- Drain the soaked papaya thoroughly and spread it in a bowl lined with two layers of paper towel to wick away excess moisture—the drier the papaya, the punchier the dressing.
- In a large mortar and pestle, pound the garlic, chilies, and a spoonful of papaya until no large pieces remain.
- Add the peanuts and crush them lightly.
- Add the tomato wedges and gently bruise them.
- Add the palm sugar and pound until it melts into a wet paste and all lumps disappear.
- Add the dried shrimp and another spoonful of peanuts and pound just until the nuts crack. Splash in the fish sauce, tamarind juice, and lime juice.
- Add the yardlong beans and the remaining papaya; pound just until everything is lightly bruised.
- Use a large spoon to toss and make sure the sugar is fully dissolved.
- Mix and pound as shown in the video, then garnish with a sprinkle of extra peanuts.
- Taste; add a little more papaya or adjust the sugar, fish sauce, and tamarind to balance.
If you don’t have a mortar
- Finely mince or grate the garlic, thinly slice the chilies, and place both in a mixing bowl.
- Put the palm sugar in a small bowl, add a splash of hot water, and mash with a fork into a syrupy paste.
- Stir in the fish sauce, lime juice, and tamarind until the sugar dissolves, then pour the dressing over the garlic and chilies. Give it a good stir so the aromatics perfume the sauce.
- Roughly chop half the peanuts and add them to the bowl.
- Lightly crack the yardlong beans with something heavy (a bottle, can, or rolling pin) and add them to the bowl.
- Add the tomato wedges and press gently to bruise them and release a little juice.
- Add the papaya and toss everything together.
- Transfer to a serving plate and scatter the remaining peanuts on top.
