Recipe for Laotian aubergine jeow spicy dip

Jeow is a spicy dipping sauce served as an accompaniment to Lao meals, like laap (minced meat salad). Like sticky rice, a jeow dish is a staple of a traditional Laotian meal.

Jeow can be made from cooked meat, grounded to a paste mixed with various ingredients.

This is our vegetarian recipe using 1 cooked aubergine and pepper.

Stefan with the two main ingredients for Laotian aubergine jeow: pepper and aubergine (!) cooked over an open fire

Ingredients for Lao aubergine jeow

• 1 aubergine
• 1 pepper
• half a teaspoon of salt
• 2 cloves of garlic
• bunch of chopped coriander
• 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
• 2 spring onions chopped
• 1 shallot
• 1 red chilli (add more if you’re mad better than us at tolerating spicy foods!)

We found that 1 chilli was our limit. More than this and terrible things happened to us 🙂

How to make aubergine jeow

1. Pierce a few holes into the pepper, aubergine and chilli with a knife (to let out the moisture while cooking).

2. Grill the aubergine, chilli, shallot and garlic cloves over an open flame until the skin blackens. The chilli only needs a few minutes. Rotate to ensure the entire skin is blackened.

Seb with the aubergine jeow ingredients being cooked over an open fire

3. Allow to cool then peel and scrape off the burnt skin and place into a pestle and mortar.

4. Pound the ingredients then add half a teaspoon of salt, the chopped coriander and keep pounding until a soft paste has formed.

5. Add 1 tablespoon of fish sauce, a tablespoon of water, spring onion and continue pounding to mix it in. Then serve.

A popular alternative is Jeow Mak Len, ie tomato salsa, where lime juice and 5 cherry tomatoes are used in place of the aubergine.

Ingredients for jeow sauce with tomatoes

You can read more about our experiences discovering food in Laos and watch our Laos travel video.