Shortcut laab-style pork is great for a quick Thai-inspired dinner

Fish sauce, rice powder make this ground meat salad an easy winner.

One of my favorite Thai dishes to make is the ground meat salad know as laab (or, often, larb). From the Isaan region of Thailand, it is tangy, funky and — most important — very easy to make. It needn’t be served hot, so it’s a great protein-packed meal for warmer late spring days and you can find everything you need to make it at any grocery store.

This recipe is a pared-down adaptation of a method from the blog Hot Thai Kitchen by Pailin Chongchitnant. In fact, I’ve pared down the recipe so much that I hesitate to even call it laab; think of it as a pork lettuce cup dish inspired by laab. It keeps the critical tang of lime juice, funk of fish sauce and nuttiness of toasted rice powder, but it skips the plethora of herbs and chiles traditionally found in the dish. The lettuce cups on the side for serving will add the same crisp texture as the herbs, and you can top it with red pepper flakes at the table if you want a bit of heat.

The most critical component of the dish is the toasted rice powder, which is simple and quick to make. Simply toast a few tablespoons of white rice (whatever you’ve got at home works fine) until it is deeply golden brown, then grind to a fine powder in a coffee grinder. (A high-speed blender will also work, but you’ll need to double the rice to have enough volume to blend; use half in the recipe, then save the remainder for next time.) The rice powder not only adds nutty flavor, but also pleasantly coarse texture and a bit of thickening power to help the lime-fish sauce dressing to cling to the pork.