Chicken Larb Salad - 15 Minute Healthy Dinner!

This easy chicken larb recipe is ready in just 15 minutes and is packed with lime, fish sauce, chilli, fresh mint and coriander. The secret is homemade roasted rice powder, which adds a wonderful nutty, toasted flavour and texture. Great for a high protein low effort dinner!

About This Larb Recipe

Larb is a South East Asian dish made with minced chicken or pork tossed in roasted rice powder. It has a salty, spicy, pungent, crunchy and herby flavour to it. It is super easy and quick to cook for a high protein, healthy lunch or dinner. The roasted rice powder gives it a distinct flavour.

Larb or laab is the national dish of Laos and is very popular in neighbouring Northern or Northeastern Thailand.

Video How To Make Larb

Video: Larb Recipe

Ingredients For Larb Recipe

Glutinous rice - Glutinous or sticky rice is a staple of Laotian cuisine and in Northern (Lanna) and Northeastern (Isan) Thailand. We toast raw glutinous rice in a dry frying pan. You can also find roasted rice powder at Asian grocery stores. If you can't find glutinous rice, raw white rice also works.

Fish sauce - Use your favourite fish sauce. Buy it in the Asian aisle of the supermarket.

Lime juice - Fresh lime juice.

Sugar - Traditionally you would use palm sugar but there are many types of palm sugar and the one that I had was a very hard caramelised one so in this case I used caster sugar.

Chilli flakes - Choose hot or mild chilli flakes according to your heat level.

Mince - Chicken or pork mince.

Shallot - Aka golden shallots. I've specified weight as they vary but generally 2-3 shallots will do.

Coriander and mint - Fresh herbs lift this dish beautifully so use these in abundance.

Tips For Making Larb

1 - Make sure to roast the rice low and slow. It takes around 10 minutes to get the rice gorgeously golden. If you use high heat you risk burning the rice. I always start making the rice first with larb as the mince takes less than 10 minutes to cook.

2 - If you plan to make larb a lot you can make up a bigger batch of the roasted rice powder to save you time.

3 - I mix the sauce and wash the herbs while the rice is cooking in the pan and the mince is cooking in another pan. If you are good at multitasking, you'll have the larb done in 15 minutes!

4 - Larb is a bit funky and sour thanks to the fish sauce and lime juice. I like adding a bit more sugar to balance this out.

5 - Serve larb with sticky rice and green papaya salad.

6 - I've tried this without the roasted rice powder and even though it may not be considered larb, it's still delicious!

Larb Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 10 minutes concurrently

Serves: 4

Ingredients Needed

50g/1.7oz raw glutinous rice
2 tablespoons oil
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
40g/1.4oz caster or palm sugar
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
500g/1.1lb chicken or pork mince
Salt to season
100g/3.5oz shallot, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 bunch each coriander and mint

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 RICE - First start toasting the rice. Add raw rice (50g/1.7oz raw glutinous rice) into a dry medium saucepan (no oil added) on medium heat tossing frequently. When the rice becomes evenly golden remove from the heat and cool for a couple of minutes. Then place in a spice grinder to grind to a powder. Set aside.

Step 2 COOK - While the rice is roasting I get onto the next step. Heat a large saucepan on medium heat and add the oil (2 tablespoons oil). Add the mince (500g/1.1lb chicken or pork mince) and cook breaking up until the texture is fine and the mince is completely cooked through (about 8-10 minutes). You don't want to brown the mince. Add salt to season.

Step 3 FINISH - While the two pans are cooking mix the fish sauce (4 tablespoons fish sauce), lime juice (2 tablespoons lime juice), caster or palm sugar (40g/1.4oz caster or palm sugar) and chilli flakes (1 teaspoon chilli flakes) together until sugar has dissolved. Add the shallots (100g/3.5oz shallot) and the sauce to the pan. Then add the rice powder (from 50g/1.7oz raw glutinous rice) and fresh herbs (1/2 bunch each coriander and mint) and toss.

Personal Note

I love 15 minute meals and because I make this so much I have roasted rice powder ready so it takes 10 minutes of active cooking time to make this for dinner. Timing really is everything. Mr NQN and I were in Melbourne last week basically eating our way around the city. We were staying near the Queen Vic Markets. One of the most famous foods there are jam doughnuts. We bought five, the smallest amount because we really just wanted to try some. After finishing two, we still had three doughnuts in the bag.

We were sharing a bench with another guy and I gestured to Mr NQN that maybe we should offer them to him as we didn't want the doughnuts to go to waste. He was watching TV on his phone and he looked like a chilled guy. So I asked him, "Would you like these doughnuts? We just bought them, but we can't finish them." and he nodded eagerly. Then just at that moment, a woman walked past with a trolley full of her worldly possessions and she leaned in and asked if she could have one. So he got two doughnuts and she got one (she only wanted one). She looked so happy enjoying the doughnut and I'm glad that she walked past that very minute!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you ever cook 15 minute meals? Do you like larb?

Chicken Larb Salad - 15 Minute Healthy Dinner! was written by Lorraine Elliott and published on Sunday, October 4, 2026 in Chicken, Everyday Dinners, Easy Recipes, Healthy Recipes, Easy Salads, Thai Recipes and Delicious Recipes.