Recipe – Spicy Thai Shrimp Salad

Spicy Thai Shrimp Salad

This is a recipe for an authentic and refreshing salad you could make as a gorgeous appetizer, side salad or healthy lunch. What can be more joyful than having a Thai shrimp salad with tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, fresh lime juice, and glass noodles in Summertime?

We will use some authentic Asian ingredients to make this Thai salad, such as concentrate cooking tamarind and fish sauce, which I use very often to make Thai larb or some stir-fried dishes. One of the key ingredients is Tamarind. It is a kind of fruit grows in the tropical area. It has a mixture of sweet but tart taste and is used very often in Thai food. I thought I could use vinegar to replace tamarind in the salad, but it’s totally different and this Thai salad wouldn’t be the same without the concentrate cooking tamarind.

What you need:

Instructions:

Step 1:
The very first thing is to put the glass noodles in cold water to make it soft.

Step2:
This is the most important step – make the salad dressing.
Put 6 cloves of garlic, 2 Thai chilies, and half of the palm sugar in a big salad bowl. It could be better to use a wooden bowl but I couldn’t find one when I made it… you could use more Thai chilies if you like spicy.
Next, we add 3 teaspoons of warm water in the bowl and start crushing all the ingredients until all the garlic and chili juice is squeezed out, and the palm sugar is melted. Add 3 tablespoons of concentrate cooking tamarind and 1 teaspoon of salt to the dressing.

Step 3:
Boil water in a pot and cook the shrimps. I put some cooking sake in it to make the shrimps taste better.
wait until the shrimps turn pink and cooked, you could put them in a bowl for later use.

Step 4:
Don’t forget the glass noodles we prepared in step one. Drain the noodles and use the same pot of water to cook for 1 minute. The noodles are already softened when we put them in cold water in the first step, so don’t cook too long.
Now you could drain the noodles and let them sit in cold water so that they don’t stick together.

Step 5:
The beautiful Thai Shrimp Salad is almost ready: drain the noodles, put the salad together. add shrimp, lettuce, noodles, and cherry tomatoes to the salad bowl, then pour over the dressing. One more secret sauce to use- fish sauce. Add about 3 tablespoons of fish sauce and lime leaves and Thai basil in the salad. Toss well to combine.

Step 6:
Squeeze the lime juice on it. Taste test the balance of salty, sweet, and sour of the Thai salad. adjust to your liking, you could add more fish sauce and salt. Garnish with two slices of lime. Your Spicy Thai Shrimp Salad is ready to serve.