Title says it all, I want a recipe that will be suitable for kids and my own aversion to spicy-spicy stuff. I love the taste of spicy foods, but my bloody teeth hurt for hours afterwards.
So, needing some alternative seasonings to make a tasty and vibrant green papaya salad. Do I just omit the chilis, or are there other tweaks I need to make?
My gut says more lime juice, but I suppose it depends on what kind of chilis you would normally use. Can you post your go-to recipe for papaya salad?
If you use a pepper with a fruity flavor, you might want to add something that will substitute that (or increase something like the tomatoes, if you use them). If you’re using a pepper that mainly brings heat to the party, you might be fine omitting it altogether. Or it might leave a discernible hole in the flavor profile that needs to be filled with something else. It could be a rebalancing of the remaining seasonings or the addition of something else altogether.
My dressing for a papaya salad is equal lime juice and fish sauce. Combine that with garlic and chilli mashed up with palm sugar. You can just leave the chilli out of that and it’ll be fine.
My tips for tarting it up would be finely chopped coriander and mint tossed in at the end, finely chopped spring onion as well (oh, and toasted peanuts). On those occassions when unripe papaya are hard to come by I’ve used various combinations of chopped chinese leaf, julienned carrot or unripe mango.
When that happens I make sure the family know it is “papaya” salad (with finger quotation marks included)
It’s all good but I confess I’m unaware of the concept of leaving the chilli out, we are a spicy family.