Today’s post involves one of my favourite cuisines – Thai. Thai food is like comfort food to me. It involves many of my favourite flavours- sour, spicy and nutty and my favourite vehicles- noodles and rice. So I decided to try my hand at Ground Turkey Larb Gai, which is basically a minced turkey salad. You can use ground meat of any kind. I used turkey because it was more readily available. By the way, I don’t think the ground turkey version is called Larb Gai, so apologies for calling it that if that is incorrect.
Delicious Ground Turkey Larb Gai
The one ingredient I was slightly puzzled over in this recipe was the toasted rice powder. The original recipe mentions using Thai sticky or glutinous rice to make the toasted powder or buying it in-store. Believe it or not, even though I went to an Asian store, I didn’t find the powder and somehow could not find Thai sticky rice. I must have missed both. I was super bummed because every Larb recipe I came across mentions the powder, so I knew this was not one to skip.
Thankfully came across a toasted rice powder recipe utilizing jasmine rice, which in my opinion, is much easier to find. The result was fantastic! I don’t know how it is compared to the real deal, but I loved it and so glad I didn’t skip using it. I served the Larb Gai on a bed of salad greens and zucchini noodles, and it was deeeeeelish. Hope you enjoy this recipe!
Ground Turkey Larb Gai
Ingredients
1 pound ground turkey (minced turkey)- 2 large shallots - sliced length-wise
- 1 tablespoon toasted rice powder - buy this at the store, or make it at home as I did
1 ½ tablespoon fish sauce
½ medium lime juice - keep the other half for later
½ cup cilantro (coriander) - chopped- 1-2 teaspoon ground red pepper - use a mortar and pestle and grind crush red pepper
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Instructions
- Make your toasted rice powder if you haven’t, following the directions in the link provided above.
- Heat the coconut oil in a large skillet on medium heat.
- Add the ground turkey and cook until browned and cooked through entirely with no pink parts. Make sure you break up the turkey, so they are small clumps vs. large clumps.
- After the turkey is cooked, turn the heat off and take the skillet off the heat.
- Fold in the sliced shallots until they wilt slightly.
- Add the fish sauce and lime juice and mix well. Taste a little bit of the turkey. If you want more salt- add more fish sauce. If you want more sour – add more lime juice.
- Add the toasted rice powder and the ground red pepper. Taste again and adjust the pepper based on your desired level of spiciness. Mix well.
- Finally, add the coriander and fold it into the ground turkey.
- Serve with a choice of salad or grains along with a wedge or two of lime for additional flavour. I served this on top of some salad greens and zucchini noodles, and it was terrific.
