Laos – Lard

by Fauzan Anandika

Meat has already become human food for many centuries, from the hunting age until a human can raise livestock, we love to eat meat. Cow, sheep, pig, or chicken cannot separate from the human dish. They developed many kinds of techniques in processing meat for consumption purposes. Grill, fry, smoked, or even steam becomes our choice to cook meat. Some dishes even use undercook or raw meat as an ingredient.

Eating raw meat has become a favorite dish for some people. They said that raw meat gives different food textures and incomparable to cooked meat. The flavor is also tasteful. The risk of eating raw meats also can be prevented by some cooking technic and choosing fresh ingredients. Laos, one of the countries in Southeast Asia, has a delicious raw meat dish called Larb.

Larb in minced meat salad, originally from Southeast Asia, some say it comes from Thailand, but it originally comes from Laos. Larb also has much spelling like (larb, laab, larp, laap, lahb, lob, lop, and the list goes on). Sometimes they use Thailand way to cook Larb to creating savory flavor. Larb uses different kind of meat start from beef, duck, pork, chicken, and for vegetarians, they use mushroom. For the seasoning, they use the fresh herb, lime juice, and fish sauce. Khao Khoua (ground roasted rice) is a must-have component of Larb. Taste better with sticky rice and fresh vegetables.

You can use different types of herbs and vegetables. And what’s makes this dish incomparable, Larb is quick to prepare and easy to cook. We need 10 minutes to cook it. Everybody could cook this salad. You can found anything you need to cook in the local market. So let’s give it a try.

Ingredient

• 100-gram long-grain white rice
• 5 ml of cooking oil
• 6 garlic, minced
• 20 ml of fish sauce
• 20 ml of shrimp paste
• 30-gram fresh basil, chopped
• 25 ml of lime juice
• 50-gram fresh mint
• 15-gram sugar
• 5 green onion, chopped
• 2 rod chopped galangal
• 5 cayenne pepper

Protein Ingredient

• 200-gram beef meat
• 2 teaspoon pepper
• 30 grams of garlic powder

Meat Preparation

1. Ground beef meat with a food processor until finely ground.
2. Add pepper and garlic powder, stir well
3. Marinate until 5 minutes.

How to cook baked rice

1. Pour rice on a baking sheet.
2. Heat oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
3. Bake the rice for up to 15 minutes.
4. Remove the rice and cool it in the open air.
5. Grind the baked rice in a food processor until becomes smooth powder.

How to cook

1. Heat cooking oil in a frying pan with medium heat. 
2. Add garlic, cayenne pepper, galangal, green onion. Cook for 3 minutes until smell good.
3. Add beef meat and cook slowly until 5 minutes.
4. Add shrimp paste, fish sauce, and sugar. Adjust to your taste.
5. Reduce the heat and keep stirring. Add ground rice and mix slowly remove to a serving plate.
6. Add lime juice, mint, and basil for a complement. 
7. Lard is ready to eat.