Food From Northern Laos

Photo: Simply Suwanee   Som Tam: The Green Papaya Salad That Runs Isan If one dish runs Isan — Thailand's big, dry northeastern plateau — it is som tam. Shredded green papaya pounded in a clay mortar with chillies, lime, long beans and tomatoes, it is sour first, fiery second, salty and funky underneath, and just sweet enough to keep you going back for another mouthful. In Isan it is not a side salad. It is the centre of the meal, eaten with sticky rice and grilled chicken, at roadside stalls, market tables and family mats on the floor. Lao roots, Isan heart Som tam comes from the Lao food world that spans both banks of the Mekong. In Laos it is tam mak hoong; across the river in Isan, where most people share Lao language and roots, it became som tam — "pounded sour." Green papaya gives the crunch, but the soul is the dressing: chillies and garlic pounded first, then lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce and, in the true Isan style, pla ra — fermented fish, close cousin t...

Photo: Hungry in Thailand Padaek: Laos' Fermented Fish Sauce Explained Every Lao kitchen has a jar of it, and every Lao cook has an opinion about it. Padaek — Laos' fermented fish sauce, also written padek or pa daek — is thick, dark, pungent and unfiltered, and it is the deep, savoury backbone of northern Lao cooking. It seasons soups, pounded salads and jeow dips in a way clear fish sauce never quite can. If you have eaten tam mak hoong in Luang Prabang and wondered where that rich, funky depth came from, this is your answer. Not the same as fish sauce Clear fish sauce — nam pa in Lao and Thai — is a strained, amber liquid made from fermented fish, used across Southeast Asia. Padaek starts the same way but goes further and stays rougher: whole small freshwater fish are fermented with salt and rice bran or roasted rice, and the result is kept unfiltered, pieces of fish and all. It is thicker, darker, saltier in a rounder way, and far more aromatic. Think of clear fish ...

Photo: Indochina Tours Khao Niao: Sticky Rice, the Heart of the Lao Table In Laos, a meal is not really a meal without sticky rice. Khao niao — glutinous rice, soaked overnight and steamed until tender and fragrant — sits at the centre of the table in its woven bamboo basket, while everything else gathers around it: the jeow for dipping, the grilled fish, the soups and salads. Lao people eat more sticky rice per person than anywhere else on earth, and in Luang Prabang you will feel why within a day — it is breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack and offering, all in one. Not jasmine rice, and not a side dish Khao niao is a different grain from the jasmine rice served across Thailand. Glutinous rice — despite the name, it contains no gluten — turns translucent, soft and pleasantly chewy when steamed, and its grains cling together just enough to be rolled into a ball with your fingers. That texture is the whole point. Sticky rice is the utensil as much as the food: you pinch off a small bal...

Soop Pak: Blanched Vegetables with Sesame and Jeow Not every dish on the northern Lao table shouts. Soop pak is the quiet one — a generous plate of blanched greens and vegetables, tossed while warm with toasted sesame, herbs and seasoning, and served at room temperature with sticky rice and a fiery jeow for dipping. It looks humble, but after the rich stews, grilled meats and chilli pastes, it is often the dish everyone keeps reaching back to: fresh, nutty, clean and deeply satisfying. A salad that is cooked, just barely Soop pak is best thought of as a warm salad. Seasonal vegetables are blanched or lightly steamed — just long enough to soften them and brighten their colour, never so long that they go dull or watery. They are drained well, chopped into bite-size pieces, and tossed with pounded aromatics and plenty of toasted sesame seeds. In Luang Prabang homes and markets you will see it sold in neat mounds alongside other ready dishes, ready to be scooped up with sticky rice fo...

Crispy khaiy phen with sesame, served with jaew — Luang Prabang's Mekong riverweed snack. (Photo: Discover Laos Today) Khaiy Phen: Crispy Mekong Riverweed, Luang Prabang's Snack Walk through Luang Prabang's morning market in the dry season and you will see them stacked like green paper — large, dark-green sheets flecked with sesame, garlic and tomato. This is khaiy phen (also written kai pen or khai paen): crispy Mekong riverweed, and one of northern Laos' most distinctive snacks. Fried for just a few seconds, it shatters like a crisp, tastes faintly of the river and the sun, and begs to be dipped in jaew bong. A snack that only the Mekong can make Khaiy phen starts as a fine, hair-like freshwater algae. It grows on rocks in the clear, fast-flowing Mekong during the cool, dry months — roughly November to February — when the water runs low and clear. Families around Luang Prabang wade out to gather it by hand, rinsing it again and again to wash it completely clean...

Sai Oua: Northern Lao Herbal Pork Sausage At markets across Luang Prabang, sai oua grills over charcoal from early morning — plump pork sausages that perfume the whole street with lemongrass, galangal and chilli long before you see them. Slice one open and the inside is green-flecked with herbs, juicy, coarse and deeply fragrant. This is northern Laos' signature sausage, and once you have tasted it fresh off the grill with sticky rice, no plain sausage ever quite measures up again. A sausage defined by its herbs What makes sai oua different is not the pork — it is everything pounded in with it. Where a Western sausage leans on salt, pepper and smoke, sai oua is built like a Lao herb paste wrapped in meat. Lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaf, shallots, garlic, chillies and fresh herbs go in in generous handfuls, so every bite tastes bright and green as well as rich and savoury. The texture is deliberately coarse: the pork is chopped or coarsely ground, never turned into a sm...