Lao Food

For some Americans, starting a pot of coffee signals the start of the day, but for many Laotians, it’s putting on the rice steamer.  When I was living at home, my parents would always get up early to cook the rice and that’s how we would wake up, with the fragrant smell of rice wafting through the house.  To us this meant, delicious food was not too far off.

Both my mom and dad have their speciality when it comes to meals.  One of my dad’s speciality is pork sausage which he makes from scratch.  He usually uses a hind portion of the pork to make it. He does not use a meat grinder to cut the meat.  Instead he chops it up because he likes the rough texture and chewy texture of the finished product.  He uses many seasoning, spices, and herbs such as thai pepper and lemon grass in the sausage.  The end result is a delicious sausage that you can freeze and cook and eat later like I did one afternoon.  To balance out the slightly greasy taste of the sausage, I accompanied it with brown rice.