Green papaya salad

This is a delicious and nutritious vegan green papaya salad, it’s dressed with a mildly and tangy sweet dressing. The papaya is a super tropical fruit, full with vitamins and minerals, healthy for any type of person.

The thai papaya salad is one of the most consumed and delicious in the Southeast Asia. Is tangy and light, this salad has a main function, prepare our appetite for the main meal, for this reason is perfect as as an entrance.

For this papaya salad recipe, we need green papaya. This type of papaya comes from the same fruit as orange papaya, but the earlier harvest of this fruit leads to its green color. The green papaya is crisp but has not juice and has a very mild flavor.

Oftenly, the green papaya salad is flavored with elements like lime, garlic, chilies, dried seafood, fish sauce and even sugar.

But for this version of green papaya salad recipe, the fish sauce is replaced by soy sauce and the sugar by the maple syrup to sweeten the dressing, but if you really like the flavor of the lime, you can perfectly add, substituting a few tablespoon of therice vinegar with lime juice.

In this recipe you can add some toasted peanuts on the top or toasted sunflower seeds, they are cheaper than peanuts and have a good flavor, but feel free to put what you think is the best.

Preparation of the green papaya for thai salad

• Important – Shredding the papaya: A good way to shred the papaya is to slice it in the half lengthwise, after this, use a spoon to remove the seeds and strings, after this step, slice each half into quarters, then, make very thin slices of papaya using a mandoline. Gather up all the slices of papaya and julienne them into the strips.
• Julienne peeler: Using a julienne peeler is a good option but you have to know how to use it very well.

Ingredients for thai green papaya salad

For the dressing:

• 3 tsp maple syrup or sugar if you prefer
• 1/3 cup rice vinegar
• 1 tsp soy sauce, if you want to replace the fish sauce
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tsp chopped shallots, this is optional
• 1 or 2 bird’s eye chili pepper (Thai chili pepper), have to be sliced

For the salad:

• 1 medium green papaya (you will need about 4 1/2 cups shredded green papaya)
• 1 or 2 persian cucumbers, julienned
• 1 large carrot, peeled and julienned
• 1/3 cup loosely packed mint leaves, chopped
• 4 tsp toasted sunflower seeds or toasted peanut

Preparation

1. Preparation of the dressing: Mix in a bowl all the ingredients for the dressing.
2. Preparation of papaya: Cut the ends of the green papaya, peel out the skin with a knife or a vegetable peeler. Hold the peeled papaya with one hand and tap the papaya with a knife using the other hand. Doing this,you should see shallow knife marks on the papaya. With careful, slice out a layer of the papaya, the one where you have been tapping. this creates green papaya shreds, or just use the method above, it’s less dangerous.
3. Toss the salad: For this, usea large bowl, mix the green papaya, cucumber, carrots, sunflower seed and mint, finally, pour the dressing that have been marinating and toss to cover the vegetables with the dressing. Serve immediately preferably for the freshness.

Hope you can enjoy this green papaya salad recipe with your family and friends, it’s very healthy and all natural, perfect for the «pre» before the main dish.