Vegan Crispy Rice Salad (Nam Khao Style)

Crispy rice salad is fried or baked rice, broken up while still crunchy and tossed through herbs, something crisp and a sharp lime dressing. The Laotian original is nam khao, and it is usually made with fermented pork. This version is not: the savoury depth comes from fried tofu and toasted peanuts instead, and it holds up on its own rather than as a substitute for something.

The dish went around TikTok a couple of years ago in a lighter form, as baked rice tossed with cucumber and edamame. Both versions are below, because they are genuinely different dishes and people come looking for each.

Ingredients

For the rice balls:

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• 3 cups cooked jasmine rice, cold, ideally a day old
• 200g firm tofu, crumbled
• 2 tbsp red curry paste, checked for shrimp
• 2 tbsp desiccated coconut
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp salt
• Neutral oil, for frying

For the salad:

• 1 cup mint leaves
• 1 cup coriander, roughly chopped
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• ½ cup roasted peanuts, roughly crushed
• 1 long red chilli, sliced
• Lettuce leaves, to serve

For the dressing:

• 3 tbsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp vegan fish sauce, or light soy plus a squeeze more lime
• 1 tbsp maple syrup or palm sugar
• 1 clove garlic, grated

Method

1. Mix the rice. Combine the cold rice, crumbled tofu, curry paste, coconut, cornflour and salt with your hands until it holds together when squeezed. Cold rice is not optional: warm rice will not form balls and will not crisp.
2. Shape it. Roll into balls about the size of a golf ball, pressing firmly. You should get 10 to 12.
3. Fry them. Heat 3cm of oil to about 180C and fry in batches for 4 to 5 minutes until deep golden. Drain on paper. To bake instead, flatten them slightly, brush with oil and bake at 220C for 30 minutes, turning once.
4. Make the dressing. Whisk everything together and taste. It should be sharp first, then salty, then barely sweet.
5. Break and toss. Crumble the warm rice balls into a bowl, breaking them into irregular pieces rather than crumbs. Add the herbs, spring onion, peanuts and chilli, pour the dressing over and toss once.
6. Serve straight away, with lettuce leaves to wrap it in. This is the part that cannot wait: the rice softens within about twenty minutes of meeting the dressing.

Prep time: 20 minutes. Cook time: 40 minutes. Serves: 4.

The lighter TikTok version

This is the one most people mean now. No frying, no rice balls, and about half the work.

Spread 3 cups of cold cooked rice on a tray, toss it with a tablespoon of chilli garlic paste and two of oil, and bake at 220C for 25 to 30 minutes until the edges catch. While it bakes, chop two Lebanese cucumbers, a cup of edamame, an avocado, a handful of mint and coriander and some spring onion. Whisk soy sauce, rice vinegar, lime juice, a little brown sugar and grated garlic for the dressing. Toss the hot rice through the cold vegetables and eat immediately.

It is a good lunch and it is not nam khao. Worth knowing the difference if you are cooking for someone who grew up with the original.

Variations

Lemon tahini. Swap the lime dressing for tahini let down with lemon juice, maple syrup, garlic and water. Heavier, and it suits the baked version better than the fried one.

Extra crisp. Fried shallots on top, which you can buy in a tub from any Asian grocer and which improve almost everything on this site.

Make it a meal. Add more tofu, or serve it alongside vegan tofu puffs. As a side it feeds six.

Storage

The rice balls keep three days in the fridge and re-crisp in a hot oven or air fryer for five minutes. Do not dress them until you are eating. A dressed salad does not keep at all, which is the one real limitation of the dish.

FAQs

What rice works best for crispy rice salad?

Day-old cooked jasmine rice. Cold rice that has dried out in the fridge overnight crisps properly, where fresh rice steams and goes gluey. Short grain sushi rice works too and holds together in slightly larger clumps, which some people prefer.

Can I make it without deep frying?

Yes. Press the rice into a thin layer and bake it, or pan-fry it in a shallow film of oil without moving it around for the first few minutes. An air fryer does a decent job at around 200C. None of these get quite as shattering as deep frying, but they are close enough and a lot less work.

How far ahead can I make it?

Crisp the rice ahead by all means, up to a day, and keep it somewhere airtight at room temperature. Do not dress the salad until you are serving it, because the rice loses its crunch within about twenty minutes of meeting the dressing. That is the one rule worth keeping.

Is crispy rice salad actually Thai?

It comes from Laos, where it is nam khao, and it is eaten across northern Thailand as well. The viral versions circulating now have drifted a long way from that, usually towards a herb-heavy salad with a lime and chilli dressing, which is a fine thing to eat but a different dish.

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