Thai-Style Mushroom Salad (Yam het)
Fortunately for us, mushrooms aren’t endangered, bad for the environment, or likely to provoke the righteous wrath of the well-intentioned.
Before they do, let’s get to the recipe: Yam or yum het–Thai mushroom salad.
Yam het comes to us from Thailand. Yam or yum is Thai for salad, het is mushroom.
Buy this book.
Doubtless many of you know this. You are Thai, or have visited Thailand. I am not, and haven’t. And despite cooking Thai food for years, it wasn’t until I bought Pepper Tiegen’s The Pepper Thai Cookbook that the recipe got my attention.
Once Pepper’s Mushroom Yum grabbed me, I paged through the rest of my Thai cookbooks. This quest turned up numerous mushroom salad recipes, all similar to hers, if not identical. All call for mushrooms, fish sauce, some kind of dried hot red pepper, salt, fresh herbs, garlic, lime juice, onion or shallots, and a sweetener. A few recipes give ground sticky rice as an option.
Tiegen’s mushrom salad recipe calls for brown sugar; David Thompson’s recipe, in the classic Thai Food, calls for white. I used a tiny bit of palm sugar, which is sold in puck-shaped rounds.
I’ve used plain white button mushrooms and Cremini in my mushroom yums, but use whatever your pocketbook permits. Always buy mushrooms from a safe, reliable source. Do not get sick and sue me. I warned you.
California is once again experiencing extreme drought. This recipe calls for cooking mushrooms briefly in a pan of water. I did, but instead of pouring the water off, I lifted the mushrooms out and used the water again to cook rice.
You wouldn’t expect a mushroom salad to keep well, but it does. The herbs get a bit soggy after a night in the fridge, but they remain flavorful.
Pepper Tiegen likes her yam het chilled, but we prefer it at room temperature. With rice, Thai mushroom salad makes a nice vegetarian main. Yam het is also delicious when served traditionally, as part of a Thai rice meal. We love Three Ladies Jasmine rice, which is widely available. This is a personal preference, not an ad.
Thai-Style Mushroom Salad (Yam Het)
This mushroom salad is a classic Thai recipe. I consulted several books, including:
Alford, Jeffrey, Chicken In the Mango Tree
Alford, Jeffrey and Naomi Duguid, The Seductions of Rice
Thompson, David, Thai Food
Tiegen, Vilailuk (Pepper), with Garrett Snyder, The Pepper Thai Cookbook
Serves: one pound/454 grams serves 3-4 as part of a Thai rice meal; as a Western-style side, it served 2 people with ample leftovers
preparation time: about fifteen minutes
Please read notes before beginning to cook.
Thai cuisine is about balancing hot, sour, salty, and sweet flavors. Finding this balance is personal, so keeping adding, stirring, tweaking, and tasting until the dish tastes good to you.
2 tablespoons fish sauce (or more, to taste)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (or more, to taste)
fresh lime zest, to taste, optional
brown sugar, palm sugar, or white sugar, 1/4 teaspoon–two tablespoons (to taste, see notes)
1/4 teaspoon-1 teaspoon dried red chile pepper or roasted red chile powder (see notes)/or 1-2 dried Thai red chile peppers, crumbled (wash your hands with soap and water before touching your eyes, mouth, or using the restroom!)
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced very finely or grated
1 pound/454 grams mixed fresh mushrooms: brown, white, cremini, portobello, Shittake, etc
1 cup/8 ounces/240 grams mixed cilantro and mint leaves (this is approximate); if you can find rau ram, sometimes called Vietnamese coriander, it’s delicious here
one lobe shallot, peeled and thinly sliced (see notes)
salt, to taste
Lettuce leaves, to line serving bowl–optional
Thai Mushroom Salad may be prepared up to 24 hours ahead of time.
In a bowl large enough to hold the finished salad, blend the fish sauce, lime juice, optional lime zest, sugar, chile pepper, and garlic. Mix with a fork and set aside.
Set a medium pot of water on to boil. Salt it. You want to be able to accommodate the mushrooms.
While water heats up, wipe mushrooms clean with damp dishcloth or paper towel. Trim stalks and any discolored bits. Quarter any gigantic mushrooms; halve others. You want them all to be roughly same size so they’re easily eaten with a fork.
Once the water is boiling, add the mushrooms and cook for about three minutes. You want them just blanched, not softened. If you live in drought country, lift the mushrooms out of the water with a slotted spoon, transferring them to a colander to drain. Use the pot of water for another dish, like rice.
If you live in a place where it rains, drain the mushrooms heedlessly into a colander.
In both cases, transfer the mushrooms to dressing bowl. Add the shallot. If you are serving the dish immediately, add the herbs and stir everything together. If you aren’t serving the dish right away, you might wait to add the fresh herbs until just before dining, as they’ll wilt.
Stir the salad and taste for hot, sour, salty and sweet flavors; add fish sauce, lime juice and perhaps salt–carefully!–accordingly. I prefer to serve dried hot pepper at the table, where people can, as Fergus Henderson puts it, express themselves.
Yam het cries out for rice.
Leftovers keep, refrigerated, up to four days. Do not freeze.
notes:
I mostly use plain white or brown button mushrooms when making Yam Het, as other mushroom varieties are costly. Feel free to use whatever you can afford. Just be sure to use edible mushrooms, and to cook them thoroughly.
Clean mushrooms with a damp dishcloth or paper towel.
I give a range of sweetness as Thai cuisine is all about balancing hot, sour, salty and sweet flavors. I personally am not fond of sweet flavors in my food, and prefer a hotter, sour palate, but my preferences are extreme.
I use a tiny amount palm sugar, as discussed in the post. Brown sugar is a good substitute.
You can purchase roasted chile powder, or make it yourself by roasting dried red chiles briefly stovetop or in the oven, then pulverizing them in a spice or coffee grinder. The powder will keep well in the freezer. I usually make just enough for one meal, as I am only one eating it.
If you prefer, use 1-2 scallions, trimmed and sliced into rings, or spring onions
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