This Thai larb recipe is one of my favorites. Larb is a tangy, spicy, delicious dish from Laos and Northern Thailand. It is made of ground meat, seasoned with lots of lime juice, ground chiles, and fish sauce.
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It is often eaten wrapped in crisp lettuce leaves with a side of sticky rice. It’s an easy recipe to make and gets a ton of flavor from just a few ingredients.
The flavors in this larb recipe are bright and full of contrast—tart and sweet, spicy, meaty, and punctuated by raw shallots and fresh mint leaves.
What Is Larb?
It is essentially a meat salad—ground meat that is browned in a skillet and then tossed with fresh lime juice, fish sauce, ground red chiles, raw shallots, and fresh mint leaves. It is the national dish of Laos and is also eaten in Northern Thailand (Isaan), where there are many Laotian people.
You’ll see this dish spelled larb, laab, or larp depending on the source — Thai and Lao don’t transliterate cleanly into English, so all three point to the same dish.
Ingredient Notes
For the meat, I use either ground pork or a 50-50 mixture of ground pork and turkey, but you can use any ground meat you like.
My favorite fish sauce brands are Red Boat, Three Crabs, and Squid Brand — skip anything watered down with a lot of sugar or coloring added, since a thin, bland fish sauce will flatten the whole dish.
Khao khua, the toasted rice powder, is an essential ingredient if you want your larb to have authentic flavor and texture—it adds savory toasty notes and a bit of crunch, and it also helps to thicken the dressing.
You can buy roasted rice powder at a Thai or Asian grocery store or online. Alternatively, you can easily make it yourself by toasting sticky rice (also called glutinous rice) in a dry skillet until it is golden brown and then grinding it to a powder using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.
What do you serve with it?
Larb is usually served as a salad or appetizer. It’s a light dish full of bright, palate-awakening flavors.
It’s common to serve lettuce leaves for wrapping up the meat. Sticky rice is also a common accompaniment. Larb is often very spicy and the raw vegetables and rice help cool the fire a bit. Of course, you can make yours as spicy or mild as you like.
My family loves to have larb as a main course. Sometimes we’ll go low-carb and just have the meat with lettuce leaves and steamed or raw vegetables on the side. When we want a more substantial meal, we might pair it with Thai fish cakes, Green Papaya Salad, and sticky rice.
What are the steps for making larb?
This dish comes together fast once the rice powder is ready, which is really the only part that takes any real time. I brown the ground pork in a hot skillet with just some of the shallots, keeping the pieces small so the meat picks up the dressing instead of clumping into big chunks.
Once it’s cooked through, I pull the pan off the heat entirely before building the dressing right in it — the rice powder, sugar, ground chile, fish sauce, lime juice, and chopped mint all go in together off the burner, so the residual heat coaxes out the rice powder’s toasty aroma without cooking off the lime’s brightness or scorching anything. Everything gets tasted and adjusted before the raw shallots and whole mint leaves go in last, so they stay crisp instead of wilting into the meat.
How Do You Make Khao Khua (Roasted Rice Powder)?
Roasted rice powder is made using sticky rice (also called sweet rice or glutinous rice). The white grains are more opaque than “regular” rice.
Sticky rice is a staple in both Thailand and Laos, where it is often served steamed as a side dish. In Japan, sweet rice is ground into a flour and used to make mochi. You can find it in an Asian grocery store, many supermarkets, or online.
To make the toasted rice powder, heat a skillet over medium-high heat. When it is hot, reduce the heat to medium and add ½ cup uncooked sticky rice.
- Cook, stirring frequently and shaking the pan to keep the rice in an even layer covering the bottom of the skillet, until the rice grains are golden brown and aromatic. It can take a while—anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes—but you don’t want to raise the heat too high and risk burning the rice.
- When the rice is toasted, transfer it from the skillet to a clean, dry bowl and let cool for a bit.
- Transfer the rice to a spice grinder or pestle and grind it to a coarse powder.
- You will end up with about 1/3 cup of the rice powder, which is more than you need for this recipe. Place the extra in a jar, cover it, and save it for another recipe.
Thai Larb
Robin Donovan
chiles, and fish sauce.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon cooking oil
- 2 to 3 shallots thinly sliced, divided
- 2 pounds ground pork
- 2 tablespoons roasted rice powder see note for making your own
- ½ to 1 teaspoon sugar
- Ground hot red chile add to taste according to your tolerance level for spicy food and the spiciness of your ground chile—anywhere from ¼ teaspoon to 1 or 2 tablespoons
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- Juice of 4 limes
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves plus additional whole mint leaves for serving
- Several lettuce leaves for serving (optional)
Instructions
- Heat a bit of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and add half of the shallots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 3
minutes. - Add the meat and cook, breaking up the meat with a spatula, until browned and cooked through, about 7 minutes. If there is a lot of liquid in the skillet, cook a bit longer, until most of the liquid evaporates.
- Remove the pan from the heat and add the rice powder, sugar, ground chile powder, fish sauce, lime juice, and the chopped mint leaves. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired.
- Stir in the remaining shallots and the mint leaves. Serve immediately or cool to room temperature before serving along with lettuce leaves for wrapping.
Notes
are golden brown and aromatic. It can take a while—anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes—but you don’t want to raise the heat too high and risk burning the
rice. When the rice is toasted, transfer it from the skillet to a clean, dry bowl and let cool for a bit. Transfer the rice to a spice grinder or pestle and grind it to a coarse powder. You will end up with about 1/3 cup of the rice powder, which is more than you need for this recipe. Place the extra in a jar, cover it, and save it for another recipe. 2. You can use any ground meat you like. Pork, duck, and chicken area all common. I like to use a 50-50 combination of pork and turkey.
Nutrition
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Thank you so much for sharing this amazing recipe! It’s super flavorful and really easy to make! Fam loves it a lot! Well done!
Hello first of all thank you for sharing this DELICIOUS recipe. This is my first time trying this kind of recipe and so far this is one of my best THAI food recipes that will share with my friends also. I’m planning on making this also during New Year’s Eve good job on sharing this recipe love it😊