Thai Spicy Grounded Chicken with Roasted Rice (Labb Gai - ลาบไก่)

Background Lab Kai or Thai Spicy ground chicken with rosted Salad is very popular dish in Thai and Most of Thai Restaurants outside Thailand serve this Thai menu as well. Lab Gai is North Eastern Thai food where people like to eat sticky rice more than stream rice, but nowadays this kind of food is popular for every parts of our country and also worldwide. "Lab" in Thai means one kind of spicy salad with rosted rice. And "Kai" means chicken. Thai people love to have Lab Gai with Papaya salad or "Som Tam", Thai style grill chicken or"Kai Yang", and the most important thing is sticky rice or "Kao Neau". We love to have several dishes to eat with rice or sticky rice,normal 3 dishes and we always sharing food.The western might be surprise why Thai people order or have so many dishes in one meal.Well, that the way we are --food is fun for us. This Thai food,Lab Gai has a combination among salty,sour,and spicy,and a special taste and smell from the rosted rice which is very difficult to explain how it tastes like, but rosted rice is the most important ingredient for this Thai menu.The gounded rosted rice made from stick rice or sweet rice, not the jasmine rice.Lots of people love this Thai dish because it taste really good and full of herbs : mint,shallots,cilantro and more.Some Thai people add some herbs like basil,green onion in to the salad as well.Actually,it is very flexible if you don't like mint you don't need it or you can replace mint by basil.Or if you don't like cilantro you can replace with green onion.And we love to serve Lab Gai with fresh vegetable like: cabbage,basil,lettuce, or any kind of vegetable you like.That why people love this food because it's a healthy food,great to eat with fresh vegetable. I recommended to make this Thai dish with chicken stock but it's ok to use water but chicken stock will provide a better taste.I always make my own chicken soup with vegetable and use this soup as a chicken stock because it's fresh and taste better than chicken stock form a can or a box.

Variations You can always repalce the grounded chicken with grounded pork or beef. Or some menu use stream or boiled fish and scrape only meat, or squid is ok as well. In this recipe, I add sliced galangal in to the soup to add more aroma to the salad, but you don't need to if you don't like galangal smell, or you can add both galangal and lemon grass,if you like. Well again, feel free to explore this recipe and add more or less flavor to make it the way you like, but make small changes and taste first before adding more. Please note that all Thai recipes are flexible as in Thailand people do not normally measure ingredients, just estimate, taste and add more until it is right. At CookingThaiFood.Com we have measured and timed our own authentic Thai recipes to give you a starting point. For people who are not used to eating spicy food we recommend starting with fewer chilies, and if you feel the flavor is too mild then add more, or if you don't want any spice then omit the chilies completely.

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