Omsom-Asian Dish Starters

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since I found out about Omsom, since then they’ve become a pantry essential for me. An update about their newest offering is at the end. While the last thing I thought we needed is another sauce or spice, there was something about the offerings from Omsom (which means rowdy in Vietnamese) that seemed interesting.

They’ve created a collection of sauces to make creating Asian dishes easy and delicious. As an article in Forbes said; “Omsom’s products focus on giving Asians, Asian-Americans, and those who love the cuisine the authentic experience of cooking iconic Asian dishes, but without needing to find ingredients like Filipino calamansi puree and Thai chili flakes that are often hard to locate.”

All the dishes can be made in 20-30 minutes, but if you want to explore other options, there are more complex variations for longer term cooking projects. And if, like me, you’re sick of cleaning, they’ve got most of the dishes down to a knife, cutting board, bowl and pot. Bless them!

First we tried the Larb, a Thai dish that I’ve always loved and made a version of a few times on my own. Omsom calls for ground chicken, but we used what we had, which was a mix of ground turkey and ground pork. All you do is sauté the meat, add the sauce, some chopped cilantro and scallions, toss with toasted rice powder (included), mint, sliced shallots and serve. It was so easy to make, and tasted great! It’s the kind of thing I could eat all the time (and quickly devoured the leftovers the next day)! I’ve got more ground pork in the freezer and am ready to make another batch at the drop of a hat. Great stuff!

Moving along, we made the Vietnamese Lemongrass BBQ. I got some thinly sliced pork cutlets at the market, so I could skip the first step of freezing and slicing the pork. This one marinates, so if you have time, give it an overnight in the fridge. We did and then chose to cook it under the broiler. Omsom gives you directions for stovetop or oven/broiler cooking (or if you had a grill…). They suggest that you serve it with Mama Pham’s Nuoc Mam dipping sauce, so I made a batch and served it with rice grits (standing in for Vietnamese broken rice). The lemongrass BBQ was good, not quite as assertive as the Larb seasoning, but combined with the dipping sauce, made it into another great dinner! Even if you don’t use the Omsom starter packets, you need to keep some of the dipping sauce in your fridge.

Next up for us will be the Filipino Sisig. Pork belly is on my shopping list and we’re looking forward to giving this a try.

The starter packs are available individually or as a set. I got the set (and sent one as a gift). Since I wrote this, they’ve added an East Asian set (China, Japan, Korea–pictured above and all delicious) and a special one-of from Pepper Tiegan, which I haven’t tried yet (but since I’m about to place another order…). Enjoy!