LARB the recipe

Sauce:
2/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup fish sauce
1 TBS sugar
2 tsp Thai roasted chili paste in oil or chili-garlic sauce

Mix together set aside.

3/4 cup canned low-salt chicken broth
1 1/2 lbs ground chicken (beef, pork, or turkey)
1 cup thinly sliced green onions
3/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
3 TBS minced fresh lemongrass
1 TBS thinly sliced Thai chilies or Serrano chilies
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh spearmint leaves

Bring broth to simmer in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken. Simmer until cooked through, breaking up meat with spoon, about 8 minutes. Add green onions and next 3 ingredients. Stir until vegetables are tender and most of liquid has evaporated, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in sauce, cilantro and mint.

Spoon into lettuces leaves, serve. (Boston or Romaine).

This is one of many recipes I found for LARB. It came from www.epicurious.com. It was very delicious! However, not as sweet as the one from Thai Siam.

Okay, so for anyone who has watched me cook or cooked with me knows that I am not very good at following recipes. I like to change the recipe just a bit and sometimes I just am not paying attention. So, this is what I did. I used turkey burger. I also did not put any Thai or Serrano chilies in it (good thing because it had enough spice without them). I put 1.5 TBL of sugar...it just needed to be a titch sweeter. I also served it over rice and then spooned it into romaine lettuces leaves. If you can't handle even a little spice, I would only use 1 tsp of chili sauce in the sauce recipe. You could also substitute the sugar for splenda. This recipe serves 6, so if you are like me...you will have leftovers for days, will be giving some away, and freezing some for later! Anybody want some LARB???

Helpful hints: buy the lemongrass, cilantro, spearmint, Thai chili or garlic chili sauce, and fish sauce at an Asian food market. It will be great quality and 1/2 to 1/3 the price of a regular store. In fact while you are the Asian market check out their spice aisle, a lot of times you can get spices you use everyday a lot cheaper, same goes for herbs and vegetables.