Laab Gai Baan – Spicy Thai Minced Chicken Salad

Let’s take a second and talk about Laab Gai Baan. I’m often asked why I live in Thailand by random people I might end up chatting with through the course of a day, particularly taxi drivers.

I’m not married, don’t have any family here, seems odd to them that I would make my home in a place that lacked these basics. And I have two answers, Thai mastery of “yu suk” or living harmoniously, and the food. Not just the culinary wizardy and sublime combinations of flavors, but the raw stuff of it.

The plethora of fruits, vegetables, and delicious proteins that find their way on to the Thai table.

When visitors from the west first see Thai market places, things may look a bit less hygienic than the plastic wrapped shelves of their native lands, but there is another factor at play here. And that is the element of “baanness”, if you’ll indulge my coinage. Baan means home, but when used as an adjective it refers to a rustic, unrefined quality. It can be, but is not always (and certainly isn’t in this case), pejorative.

When we’re talking about chicken it means a traditional bird, not one of these massive genetic freaks, and a bird that is farmed by a small operation, not one of the huge food production/distribution companies like CP. What this means practically is that Gai Baan is not fed all of the anti-biotic, growth hormone enhanced feeds that are more or less ubiquitous in the massive factory farms run by corporate entities, it isn’t the product of genetic engineering in any modern sense, and it usually has a bit more space to wander around in than its mutant kin. It’s a chicken, plain and simple.

And it is often the case that if you’re going to a fresh market and buying Gai Baan raw to cook at home, that you are buying it from a close family member of the farm’s operator. The logistics chain between that bird’s place of origin and you could only be shorter if you went and snatched it out of the coup yourself, and this means minimal handling and processing.

To the refined palate this translates to a lot more than just a reason to feel good about a more health conscious and greener chicken selection. Gai Baan possesses an entirely different texture and flavor than it’s bulkier cousins. The meat is firmer and tauter, lacking the airy “puffiness” of factory farmed birds, and the flavor is much richer, much broader, and much heartier.

Now, back to taxi drivers and my food excuse for expatriation. In response to that question one morning about 3 months ago I went on a bit of a rant about how in my native US it is almost impossible to find any meat or poultry that wasn’t farmed in a petri dish.

So emphatic was my passion, so strong my conviction, and so high my praise of his beloved homeland, the driver adamantly refused to accept payment for my ride (around 120 baht) and instead insisted on shaking my hand and wishing me good luck and health. The moral of the story is that good people like good food, and that good food is grown by families and not firms. Now off to the market……