Easy Papaya Salad Hack | How to Make Lao Papaya Salad in the Desert
Whenever I go on a vacation or just in general a trip away from my kitchen, I get those Lao papaya salad shakes. It means I’m craving papaya salad, but none of the restaurants make it the way I like it. The easiest solution is bringing your own papaya salad kit. Recently, I went to Joshua tree on a work retreat and I limited myself to bringing items. I decided to make a kit that didn’t need a mortar and pestle. My papaya salad kit included: a whole green papaya, padaek, shrimp paste, fish sauce, tamarind paste, crab paste, tomato, garlic, lime, sugar, and msg. You can see its a long list to make it. I condensed my papaya salad kit by dividing the ingredients into single use items. Here are my tips to making your own papaya salad anywhere in the world:
use roma tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes so you don’t have to carry around so many tomato with the risk of smoothing them all in your bags
put all the liquid ingredients like padaek, fish sauce, tamarind in one bottle so you save space and make sure to wrap it in an extra bag so it doesn’t leak and make your luggage all smelly (but still smelly good)
you won’t need your mortar and pestle, but you will need a few extra zip lock bags and also bring some cloves; its going to get a little messy
put all your solid pastes in aluminum foil and wrap it tightly
With the tips above, it should help you limit the amount of things you are bringing. Make sure to watch my full video below for the details and some light hearted laughs.
Watch On Youtube
Here is my original Lao papaya salad recipe that works every time!
