Popular Thai Street Food - Vegan Som Tum (Green Papaya Salad)

Besides the whole plant having medical and healing properties, most parts of the papaya plant are edible, including the flower, the fruit, the seeds, and the leaves. The papaya fruit, in its various forms of ripeness, lends itself to a wide range of recipes. Today, Ms. Mali will share with you how to prepare the vegan Thai version of this crunchy, sweet, sour, spicy, and savory dish.

“Let’s start with first making the tamarind paste. Add the tamarind paste with about 80 milliliters of warm water. Squeeze and mix them together so that the tamarind dissolves in the water. Next, we will roast the raw peanuts. Take one cup of raw peanuts and two tablespoons of salt. When roasting, we will use low heat. We roast the peanuts for about 10 minutes until they are fragrant, and the peanuts begin to crack.

We will now prepare the papaya and the carrot. To start, we first peel off the papaya skin. For the long beans, we use about one cup. We cut off both ends. Cut to approximately two-knuckles-long. For kids, it will be safer to use the shredder instead. This is a medium size papaya, and it has a lot of flesh. We chop it like this and then slice it thinly. We will get papaya shreds that are crunchy in texture.”

Now that we have shredded the raw green papaya and prepared the other vegetables, let’s assemble them together and mix them with the salad dressing ingredients using a pestle and mortar. “The ingredients for the papaya salad are ready. Now, let’s make the papaya salad. We add five chilis to the mortar. Pound the chilis. The number of chilies to use is up to you. Add the long beans, approximately one tablespoon of the vegan mushroom powder, soy sauce, and sugar. We will add coconut sugar. The coconut sugar will help make it more fragrant.”

“We will separate the tamarind paste pulp like this. We only use the water. We don’t use the pulp. Tomatoes. Cut and add in two tomatoes. Lime, we squeeze in a bit of lime juice. Finish off with the papaya, which is indispensable. You can start with a little first. Continue pounding till all the ingredients are incorporated. We have used up the whole papaya. We have now finished preparing our papaya salad. Let’s plate it. We can serve it with lettuce leaves or with sticky rice. Finally, we sprinkle on some of the roasted peanuts. This is it. Our Som Tum, Vegan Thai Green Papaya Salad is now complete.”