Sakoo Sai Moo

Thai steamed tapioca dumplings, translucent pearl skins wrapped around a sweet and salty filling of minced pork, peanuts, palm sugar, and pounded coriander root

Origin: Bangkok and Central Thailand

From the journey of Cassava.

Thailand had no traditional cassava culture worth the name and is now the largest exporter of cassava products in the world. That is an industrial story and it belongs to the Khorat Plateau in the north-east, the poorest and driest farming country in the kingdom, which was planted with cassava for export from the 1950s: first as dried chips and pellets for European animal feed, then as refined starch. Thai tapioca starch now underpins a great deal of the world's processed food and very nearly all of its bubble tea. The Thai kitchen's own use of it is smaller and turns almost entirely on the pearl. Sakoo, which Thai and Indian English alike call sago although it is nothing of the kind, is the small tapioca ball, and sakoo sai moo is what it is best known for: pearls hydrated into a sticky skin, wrapped around a filling of minced pork cooked down with palm sugar, fish sauce, peanuts, shallot, and pounded coriander root, and steamed until the skin turns glassy and clear. They are eaten warm as a snack, served on a leaf with crisp lettuce, coriander leaf, fried garlic, and slivers of raw bird's eye chilli, and the combination is a small essay in the Thai balance: sweet, salty, and fragrant in the filling, bland and slippery in the skin, hot and sharp and green in what you eat it with. The distinction between tapioca and true sago is worth holding onto. Sago is the pith starch of the palm Metroxylon sagu, a genuine and distinct food of eastern Indonesia and New Guinea. What is sold as sago in Bangkok, Chennai, or London is almost always cassava.

Ingredients

Skin

250 g small tapioca pearls (sakoo), about 2 mm
160 ml warm water
0.25 tsp fine salt

Filling

250 g minced pork
60 g roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
4 shallots, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 coriander roots, scraped and pounded
60 g palm sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
0.5 tsp white pepper, ground
2 tbsp neutral oil

To serve

3 tbsp crisp fried garlic in its oil
1 head lettuce, leaves separated
4 bird's eye chillies, thinly sliced

Method

Make the filling first. Heat the oil in a wok and fry the pounded coriander root, garlic, and shallot over a medium heat for three minutes until fragrant and softened.
Add the minced pork and fry, breaking it up, for five minutes until cooked through and beginning to catch. Add the palm sugar, fish sauce, soy, and white pepper and cook for a further five to eight minutes until the mixture is dark, sticky, and almost dry.
Stir in the chopped peanuts, then tip the filling out and let it cool completely. Roll it into 24 small balls about the size of a hazelnut.
Rinse the tapioca pearls briefly, drain, and put them in a bowl. Add the salt and the warm water a little at a time, mixing with your hand, until the pearls are evenly damp and just cling together. Cover and rest for twenty minutes.
Take a heaped teaspoon of the pearls, flatten it into a disc on your damp palm, set a ball of filling in the middle, and close the pearls around it, rolling gently to seal.
Line a steamer with oiled banana leaf or baking paper, arrange the dumplings with space between them, and steam over a vigorous boil for fifteen to twenty minutes.
They are ready when the skins have turned from opaque white to clear and glassy and you can see the dark filling through them. Brush with the fried garlic oil while hot.
Serve warm, each dumpling on a lettuce leaf, topped with crisp fried garlic, coriander leaf, and a sliver of raw chilli, to be folded up and eaten in one bite.

Notes

Use the small pearls, about 2 mm, sold as tapioca or sago by Thai and Indian grocers. The large black boba pearls used in bubble tea are a different product and will not work. Do not soak the pearls in standing water. They are dampened and rested, not hydrated as they would be for a pudding. A vegetarian filling of finely chopped mushroom, firm tofu, peanuts, and palm sugar with light soy in place of the fish sauce works very well and is common in Thai Buddhist cooking. The same skin wrapped around a sweeter filling gives sakoo sai wan, and the same pearls in coconut milk give the pudding sakoo piak.

The Gastrographer

Name: Sakoo Sai Moo
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Bangkok and Central Thailand
Ingredients: 250 g small tapioca pearls (sakoo), about 2 mm; 160 ml warm water; 0.25 tsp fine salt; 250 g minced pork; 60 g roasted peanuts, roughly chopped; 4 shallots, finely chopped; 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped; 2 coriander roots, scraped and pounded; 60 g palm sugar; 2 tbsp fish sauce; 1 tbsp light soy sauce; 0.5 tsp white pepper, ground; 2 tbsp neutral oil; 3 tbsp crisp fried garlic in its oil; 1 head lettuce, leaves separated; 4 bird's eye chillies, thinly sliced

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control