Crispy Rice Salad with Cucumbers and Herbs
In This Post Jump To The Recipe Why I Love This Recipe Visual Walk-Through of the Recipe Frequently Asked Questions Ratings I Don’t Think I’ve Ever Loved a Salad As Much As I Love This Crispy Rice Salad.
Let’s discuss.
First of all, there’s papery thin vegetables (cucumber! shallot!) and a whole lot of herbs (mint! cilantro! add more, more, more!).
And secondly, there’s a beautiful pile of clumpy fried golden red curry jasmine rice – it’s crisped and golden on the outside, but soft and carby enough on the insides to still absorb some of the limey, garlicky, salty vinaigrette with all the flavor.
OOF I am drooling just thinking about it.
I can throw some crushed peanuts at this thing and be fully and absolutely happy without any other protein. But if you are the kind of person who wants to get some bonus protein up in the mix (you know what I’m going to say!) I’d recommend the air fryer chicken or the air fryer salmon here. We’ve done both; they’re both great.
This salad is a riff on Nam Khao which is a Laotian appetizer-style salad where the rice is fried into balls with fermented sausage, broken apart, and then eaten on a platter with lettuce cups. I tried a version of this at Hai Hai about a year ago and honestly have been thinking about trying to make it ever since. It was SO good. Then (it was fate!) Molly Yeh recently posted a video about making crispy rice in the air fryer! Genius. And this is how we ended up here, with a brand new salad obsession just in time for Summer 2024.
Blitz up the dressing, and chop up the salad stuff. I like to use a mandoline for the cucumbers and shallots.
Mix the rice with a bit of oil and red curry paste. For the air fryer, I like to have the texture being sticky / wet enough that you can kind of squeeze it into loose chunks. If the rice is dried out / several days leftover, I will add a tablespoon or two of water and maybe even a bit of cornstarch to the mix to help it revive a bit.
Yes, clump it. Just place sticky handfuls of the rice in the air fryer in a single layer. They don’t have to be balls, but you also don’t want each individual grain of rice to be separated. Just kinda clump it in there.
I do it at 420 for about 8 minutes till it’s nice and golden brown and crispy around the edges! (If you don’t have an air fryer, there are other options in the notes.) When it’s done, scoop chunks of the rice onto your salad bowl! It’ll look like this:
Toss the veggies and rice with the dressing.
Seriously. This might be my favorite salad I’ve ever made.