Green mango salad
A salad built on a fruit used as a vegetable. Green mango is hard, sour and crunchy — closer to a radish than to ripe mango, and that is the point. A ripe fruit collapses into a bowl of sweet mush and the recipe stops working. The dressing is the classic Thai trio: acid from lime, salt from fish sauce, sweetness from palm sugar, balanced to taste.
Your own work in that: 5 min.
- Mango 15 min
- Dressing 5 min
- Assembly 5 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneChoose mangoes as hard as apples
Buy mangoes that are hard to the touch, with no give at all under a finger, with green skin. Even slightly ripe fruit falls apart as you cut it into matchsticks and releases juice that turns the salad to fruit mush.
Ingredients: 3 pcs green mangoes · 2 pcs shallots · 2 pcs chillies · 1 bunch coriander · 15 pcs mint · 60 g peanuts · 2 tbsp dried shrimp
Peel and cut into fine matchsticks
Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh into matchstick strips — with a knife or a julienne peeler. Dicing does not work: it is the long thin strips that catch the dressing and give the characteristic crunch.
Ingredients: 3 pcs green mangoes · 2 pcs shallots · 2 pcs chillies · 1 bunch coriander · 15 pcs mint · 60 g peanuts · 2 tbsp dried shrimp
Matchsticks, never dice.Dissolve the palm sugar in lime juice
Work the palm sugar into the lime juice until completely dissolved, then add the fish sauce and crushed garlic. The sugar must dissolve before anything else goes in — in a finished dressing it settles at the bottom and the salad seasons unevenly.
Ingredients: 3 pcs limes · 2 tbsp fish sauce · 2 tbsp palm sugar · 1 clove garlic
Sugar fully dissolved before the rest goes in.Balance the dressing
Taste and adjust: too sour, add sugar; too sweet, add juice; too flat, add fish sauce. This dressing should taste too strong on its own, because it has to spread across a lot of mango. Add the chopped chilli.
Ingredients: 3 pcs limes · 2 tbsp fish sauce · 2 tbsp palm sugar · 1 clove garlic
Toss by hand, not with spoons
Combine the mango with the shallot, herbs and dressing and toss with your hands, pressing lightly. That motion is like the light pounding in a mortar used for Thai salads: it bruises the fibres just enough to let them absorb the dressing, which spoons will not do.
Ingredients: 3 pcs green mangoes · 2 pcs shallots · 2 pcs chillies · 1 bunch coriander · 15 pcs mint · 60 g peanuts · 2 tbsp dried shrimp
By hand, pressing lightly — the fibres take up the dressing.Add the peanuts at the last moment
Scatter over the crushed peanuts and dried shrimp only on the plate. Mixed in earlier they soak up dressing and soften within minutes, and their whole job is crunch. Serve immediately.
Ingredients: 3 pcs green mangoes · 2 pcs shallots · 2 pcs chillies · 1 bunch coriander · 15 pcs mint · 60 g peanuts · 2 tbsp dried shrimp
Before you start
When there is no green mango
Substitute green papaya or a tart granny smith apple — both are hard and crunchy. Papaya is mild, so add more lime; squeeze lime over the apple the moment it is cut, since it browns within minutes.
Dried shrimp
They bring the salty, marine note typical of Thai salads. Asian grocers sell them; toast them briefly in a dry pan before using. Leave them out and the salad is vegetarian, provided you swap the fish sauce for soy.
Eat it straight away
The salt and acid in the dressing quickly draw water out of the mango, and after a quarter of an hour the salad turns watery. Everything can be prepared ahead — keep the cut mango in a sealed box in the fridge — but combine with the dressing only at the table.
