Low Carb Laab, Thai Meat Salad My Way!

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Laab is a Thai salad. But this salad doesn’t contain veggies, it is a meat salad! It consists of fried minced meat mixed with a pungent herb dressing, soo tasty!

The meat can be chicken, pork or beef. I used a mix of pork and beef this time.

Traditionally you would find ground, roasted rice in a laab. For a low carb version we use ground roasted peanuts instead. Peanuts are common in thai cooking but if they are too high in carbs for you, supbstitute for roasted almonds, like these.

We also use sweetener instead of sugar in the thai holy trinity fishsauce, lemon/ lime juice and sugar.

Dried ground chilies are used traditionally. They can be found at asian stores, are really hot and can be stored for ages. But use fresh chili if you want. Or shriracha sauce.

For the herb part you can use ciantro, sweetbasil, mint and holy basil. You need the mint and at least one more herb, use as many kinds as you want or can get your hand on.

A qute serving idea is to spoon your laab into cups of lettuce leafs! But I was as usually hungry and impatient so I didn’t have time for anything fancy 🙂

Laab 4 servings

• 4 spring onions
• 1 decent bunch of cilantro and or other fresh asian herbs
• about 20 mint leaves
• 1/2 tsp dried  ground chili, or 1 fresh
• 2 garlic cloves
• 4 tbsp fish sauce
• juice from 2 limes or 1 ½ lemon
• sweetener equivalent to ½ tbsp sugar
• 1 small handfull coarsly ground roasted peanuts or almonds
• 1 pound and 2 oz, or 500 grams, of ground meat
• Good quality neutral oil to fry in

Slice spring onions thinly. Chop fresh herbs coarsly. Place mint leaves ontop of each othere. Roll tightly. Slice thinly. Place onions and herbs in a mixing bowl.

Mix. Reserve a small part of onion- herb mixture to sprinkle over finished dish.

Grate or chop garlic finely and add to bowl together with ground peanuts,ground chili, fish sause, lemon/ lime juice and sweetener. Stir to disolve sweetener.

Taste. Adjust flavour with fish sause, lemon/ lime juice, sweetener and chili until you have a well balanced, pungent, hot dressing.

 

 

Heat up a generous amount of oil in a skillet on high heat.

Add minced meat. Fry, while breaking up with a fork.

Fry the minced meat until it is dark golden brown and crisp. This takes quite a while! My meat first needed to loose some liquid before starting to crisp up.

Remove from heat.

Stir in dressing.

 

Taste. Add fish sauce, lime juice, sweetener and chili as needed.

Sprinkle with reserverd onion- herb mixture.

Serve at room temperature with  low carb papaya salad.

Enjoy!