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Authentic Thai Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum)

Close-up of a vibrant raw papaya salad featuring shredded papaya, bright red cherry tomatoes, and crisp green beans in a savory dressing.
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Make this fresh, spicy, and tangy Thai salad using unripe papaya. This recipe guides you through balancing the key flavors of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy.

Ingredients

Scale
  • 2 cups shredded unripe (green) papaya
  • 1/4 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1/4 cup long beans (or green beans), cut into 1-inch pieces
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 to 3 Thai chilies (adjust to your spice preference)
  • 1 tablespoon dried shrimp (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon palm sugar (or brown sugar)
  • 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice (freshly squeezed)
  • 1/2 teaspoon tamarind paste (optional, for extra sourness)

Instructions

  1. Prepare the dressing base: Place the garlic and Thai chilies into a mortar. Pound them gently with a pestle until they are roughly crushed and fragrant. Do not over-process into a paste.
  2. Add the dried shrimp (if using) and peanuts to the mortar. Pound lightly a few times to combine the flavors.
  3. Add the palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, and tamarind paste (if using) to the mortar. Stir well until the sugar dissolves into the liquid mixture. This is your authentic Som Tum dressing.
  4. Add the long beans and cherry tomatoes to the mortar. Gently bruise them by pressing them against the sides of the mortar with the pestle. You want them slightly broken to release juice, not fully mashed.
  5. Add the shredded unripe papaya to the mortar. Use the pestle to gently toss and pound the papaya with the dressing mixture. Work quickly, tossing everything together until the papaya is coated and slightly softened, about 1 to 2 minutes.
  6. Taste the salad. Adjust the flavor balance by adding more lime juice for sourness, fish sauce for saltiness, or sugar for sweetness.
  7. Transfer the spicy papaya salad to a serving plate. Garnish with extra chopped peanuts before serving immediately.

Notes

  • If you do not have a mortar and pestle, you can mix the dressing ingredients in a bowl and then lightly toss them with the vegetables in a large mixing bowl.
  • For a vegetarian or vegan papaya salad, omit the fish sauce and dried shrimp. Substitute the fish sauce with an equal amount of light soy sauce or vegan fish sauce.
  • Use only firm, unripe (green) papaya; ripe yellow papaya will be too sweet and soft for this salad.
  • You can add shredded carrot along with the papaya for color and texture.

Nutrition

Find it online: https://blissbatter.com/raw-papaya-salad-recipe-som-tum-authentic/