Search the luggage of Thai people travelling aboard and you will surely find food items rolled with a newspaper or a piece of cloth, hidden deep in their bags. Thai students will never travel without a jar of their favoriteRoasted Chili Jam and Thai Housewives will always carry their preferredFermented Shrimp Paste. Both will probably also carry couple of fermented Thai sausages as well.
You see, the intense and defined flavors of Thai cuisine, so harmonically coming together to a full whole, is simply irreplaceable. Thai people will not survive long without their loved Thai food.
Naem is a fermented sausage made with pork, pork skins, cooked sticky rice (gelatinous), fresh garlic, salt, sugar and bird’s eye chilies. The sausage is wrapped in banana leaves or synthetic casings and fermented for 3-5 to days at about 30C and 50% humidity. The fermentation process enables the growth of Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts, mostly lactobacilli, which accounts to the sourness of the sausage. The salt acts as an inhibitor preventing the meat from going rotten, allowing Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts to feed on the rice and sugar, fermenting the meat to perfection.
Naemis usually eaten with sliced ginger, chopped shallots, peanuts, bird’s eye chilies and spring onions. The fresh shallots give the dish a sweet heat that harmonizes well with the sourness of the naem.
Naem is also used in many recipes, the better known are fried rice with naem andnaem fried with eggs.
Whether eaten raw or used for cooking, Thai sausages are packed with flavors!
So, for You, Thai people living abroad and for you, the lover of Thai food, I prepared this step by step tutorial on how to prepare a homemade fermented Thai sausage.
Fermented Thai Pork Sausage Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1kg Pork lean Meat, Minced
- 350 gr Pork Skin
- 25 cloves Garlic
- 2 1/2 tbs Sea salt
- 1/2 tbs Sugar
- 1 tsp Monosodium Glutamate
- 1 Cup Cooked sticky rice (gelatinous rice)
- 40 bird’s eye chilies
Steps
- Trim and discard all the fat from the pork, leaving only lean red meat.
- Mince the pork meat. I use an old fashioned heavy duty manual meat grinder to do the job and rarely relay on the butcher for help.
- Clean the pork skin by rubbing vigorously with rough sea salt and white vinegar. Wash with running water. Repeat as necessary until the skin is clean and smooth.
- Cook the skin in boiling water until the skin become transparent and break easily when pinched. This can take up to 40 minutes.
- Shred the skin into thin strips of approximately 2mm wide and 4cm long
- In a mixing bowl combine all the ingredients; the pork meat, skin, garlic, rice, salt, sugar and MSG and work everything with your hands until the mixture is well and evenly mixed.
- According to the size of the sausage you make, arrange pork mixture on one corner of 20 x 20 cm banana leaf. Top with bird’s eye chilies, and roll as shown in the picture. If you do not have access to banana leaves you can use plastic wraps to create the sausage.
- Allow to ferment for 3-5 to days at about 30C and 50% humidity.
Related Entries
Cured pork is made by fermenting a mixture pork meat, cooked pork skin julienne, salt, garlic and cooked sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves. During the summer we leave the wraps unrefrigerated until a rich savory and slightly sour flavor develops. This method of preserving meat goes back to the days before refrigeration was widely […]
In this video you will learn how to prepare an excellent Pat Thai noodles (ผัดไทยกุ้ง) Pat Thai is being sold all over the kingdom of Thailand and abroad. Variations to this dish are probably as many as the restaurants and food stalls that sell it. Here is a luxurious, well balanced and tasty version of […]
A friend and a colleague, who used to live on a boat for 10 years in the British Virgin Islands, told me recently, that they had lots of tamarind trees over there and how much she loves the sauces and jellies made from tamarind. In Thai cooking we love tamarind as well. anyone who is […]
In this video you will learn how to prepare an authentic Thai green chicken curry. (แกงเขียวหวานไก่ Gaeng khiao Waan Gai) Thai green curry is one of the popular ambassadors of Thai food in overseas restaurants. As such the dish has suffered modifications and abuses. This video demonstrates the authentic method of creating a flavorful curry […]
Matsaman curry gets its entire flavor from the rich combination of spices, palm sugar, fish sauce and tamarind sauce. I love the way the richness of the beef come through the spices with a clear three tastes; starting with sweet followed by sour and then salty. The addition of the potatoes thickens the curry just […]
Tagged as:Cured Pork,Northern Style Thai Food,naem
Listen to the Thai name pronunciation
