Lao Vegetarian Recipes

Laos' cuisine is as exotic and mysterious as the landlocked Southeast Asian nation itself. Situated between Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Cambodia, Laos owes large portions of its food culture to each, but the rugged terrain and isolated political and cultural status have helped evolve a truly unique cuisine.

Laos' food culture is dominated by subsistence farming and the mighty Mekong River, which snakes its way through the jungle from Huay Xay to historic Luang Prabang, through Vientiane, and then on past Savannakhet and Pakse before moving on to Cambodia. The river has provided many Laotians with their daily sustenance for centuries, and many freshwater seafood varieties and river vegetables and herbs find their way into Lao cuisine. Centuries of occupation and rule by the French, combined with the flavors of Southeast Asia, have created one of the world's true fusion cuisines - you can just as easy find a chicken baguette on the streets of Luang Prabang as a bowl of Or Lam.

Fresh herbs and vegetables, chilies, and fermented fish products dominate as elsewhere in Asia, but you will find many ingredients woven throughout Lao cuisine that are not available in the west, not to mention some that may not even have an English name! Exotic ingredients such as "pepper wood", monkey vegetable, khai pene, and Mekong mushrooms all give Lao food its amazingly unique flavor - unlike anything you'll find in Thailand or Vietnam - but are easily replaced in most dishes with ingredients a little easier to find in the West.

Lucky for us vegetarians, meat is not a common luxury in Laos. Any and all protein sources are used when available, but that deficiency has led the Lao to create a cuisine based on more vegetables and the be-all end-all of Lao food - sticky rice. Every meal is served with a massive ball of the local sticky rice and you will find it at every meal, everywhere, not to mention woven into the local culture (apparently, as we're told, one postulate for the Lao being of small stature is the the consumption of so much sticky rice makes them "stick close to the ground". Usually served with a wide array of dips, for which the Lao have a special taste, sticky rice forms the glue that holds Lao cuisine together. Due to the lack of (until recently) modern restaurants in Laos, most of the recipes that are available are about as authentic as you can get - the same you'd be served in a small village overlooking the Mekong.

If you are looking for the most authentic Lao ingredients, please don't hesitate to contact our friends at Tamarind in Luang Prabang!