The clay mortar and pestle is an ancient cooking utensil long used in the Northeast of Thailand and Laos. The prime purpose of this specific tool is to lightly pound the ingredients that make up Thailand’s most famous salad, som tam.
It’s difficult to argue against the clay mortar and pestle being an essential piece of your kitchen toolkit for Thai cooking. While I mentioned its primary purpose is to make som tam, there are actually dozens of Thai salads of the ‘tam’ (ตำ) type, particularly popular in Isan. Tam (ตำ) means to pound.
To perhaps reinforce its importance further, the clay mortar and pestle is a popular vessel in which to make an entirely different type of Thai salad, known as ‘yam’. In this instance, yam does not mean sweet potato! It is actually not easily translatable into English. The best approximation is to say “aromatic salad”.
A clay mortar and pestle looks like quite a rustic tool, sort of like something you might expect to see in a museum showcasing culinary artifacts from long ago. While ancient culinary tools like iron trivets are consigned to museums, the humble clay mortar and pestle stood the test of time. You’re almost guaranteed to find one in any modern Thai kitchen today!
Aside from the famous papaya salad, you can make long bean salad, cucumber salad, and many more besides in this type of mortar. It’s worth noting that the mortar itself is typically a clay construction. But the pestle, the thing you use to pound your salad ingredients, is wooden.
The onomatopoeic phrase Thais use for the sound a wooden pestle makes when it rhythmically thumps against the clay pestle is ‘pok pok’. This also happens to be the name of a famous Thai restaurant in America belonging to Andy Ricker. He also wrote a book of the same name.
I genuinely recommend getting one of these for your kitchen if you have space. You cannot make good papaya salad using the heavier granite types of mortars that are reserved for making curry pastes.
Since they are not the easiest things to find, Amazon comes in handy. One particular seller offers the real-deal Thai & Laos Earthenware Clay Mortar with Wooden Pestle. The beauty of this particular listing is that it comes in different sizes, and you can make a choice depending on how much room you have in your kitchen.
In summary, the utility of a clary mortar with wooden pestle far outreaches the apparently limited use of pounding papaya salads. In fact, if you want to make the vast majority of Thai salads, apart from larb, you need this exact piece of equipment. Otherwise, it just won’t taste right.
I hope this page proves a useful resource on your Thai salad-making endeavours. Please also check out my lengthy resources page full of Thai cooking equipment for your kitchen.