Luang Prabang sweet-hot-savoury chili paste of pounded dry-roasted red chili, garlic, galangal and shallot, sweetened with palm sugar and rounded with fish sauce and tamarind, studded with strips of dried water-buffalo skin. The sticky-rice companion.
Luang Prabang, the old Lao royal capital. It was a favourite of the former royal family and appears in the handwritten recipe collection of Phia Sing (1898-1967), the king's personal chef and master of court ceremonies, a manuscript that became a key record of Lao palace cooking. The buffalo-skin element is the workshop signature: leftover dried hide from the village butcher's board was rehydrated, fried crisp, then pounded back into the paste, turning a tough by-product into a chewy, savoury carrier.
Tamarind cooking school in Luang Prabang (Sakkaline Road, since 2009) teaches a 4-day fermentation step before final cooking — most market versions skip it, but the rest-day deepens the chili from sharp to round. Phia Sing's recipe specifies 'three pestle-arms' worth of pounding.
Dark red, sticky-thick like jam, glistening with palm oil. Spread thin on a sticky-rice ball: hot up front, sweet right after, slow chewy crunch from the rehydrated buffalo skin embedded in the paste. Lasts months in the fridge, deepens to molasses at 4 weeks.
Dry chilies must be dry-roasted before pounding — without the toast, the paste tastes raw-vegetal. Palm sugar caramelises gently in the wok at the end (8–10 minutes, never browning) to bind the paste; over-cooked, it goes brittle and shatters when stirred.
Variations
Jeow bong with nang khway (buffalo skin, the Luang Prabang reference); without skin (sold to tourists, lighter); jeow bong nam pa (made with padaek, saltier, rare); Vientiane variants add fermented anchovy paste, which Luang Prabang purists reject.
On the Palate
Where Jeow Bong sits in the Lao flavor cloud
Dry-roast the chiles before pounding and let the palm sugar caramelize gently at the end: toasting kills the raw-vegetal edge, and the sugar must melt slow without browning or it goes brittle and shatters when you stir.
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
4 steps · 18 min active + 20 min waiting
- 115 min
Soak 80 g dried chilies in hot water 15 min; drain.
Watch outDrain the chiles well after soaking; extra water in the mortar makes the paste loose and slow to fry down.
- 28 min
Pound chilies + 4 garlic + 30 g dried buffalo skin (rehydrated) + 4 shallots in mortar.
- 310 min
Fry paste in 60 ml oil 8 min; add 60 g palm sugar + 2 tbsp fish sauce + 2 tbsp tamarind.
Watch outFry the paste until it darkens and smells toasted before the sugar goes in — that's when the raw edge is gone.
- 45 min
Simmer to sticky-thick; cool; jar.
Watch outSimmer just until it's sticky-thick and holds its shape off the spoon; cool before jarring so it firms.
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