A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Created by
Beef and highland paste go into a pot with water. Two hours later, the water is gone. What remains is a dark, sticky glaze of Burmese-route spices clinging to every fiber of beef. Lanna concentration at its purest.
Jin hoom is what happens when you trust the kreung tam to do everything. Meat. Paste. Water. That's it. You put them in a heavy pot, bring it to a simmer, and you wait. Over two hours, the water disappears. The paste doesn't leave with it. It clings. It concentrates. It coats every piece of beef in a dark, impossibly intense glaze of highland spices. No coconut milk, because coconut palms don't grow in the northern mountains. No rich broth to ladle into a bowl. Just meat and spice, reduced to their most concentrated form. This is Lanna dry-braising, and it's one of the most disciplined techniques in all of Thai cooking.
The paste is where the North separates from the rest of Thailand. Open a Lanna mortar and you'll find ginger where Central Thai would use galangal. You'll find toasted coriander seed and cumin, spices that traveled south from Myanmar and Yunnan along ancient trade routes and never left. You'll find tua nao (ถั่วเน่า), fermented soybean discs, providing the deep umami that shrimp paste delivers down south. Star anise. Turmeric. Black pepper. This is a mountain paste, not a tropical paste. Ajarn always said the kreung tam tells you where a dish was born. One look at this paste and you know you're in the highlands.
The technique requires patience, not talent. Cut the beef. Pound the paste. Put everything in a pot with water, fish sauce, palm sugar. Bring it up. Drop it to a lazy simmer. Then the hard part: you mostly leave it alone. The water carries the paste into the meat, softens the collagen, builds body. In the last thirty minutes, everything changes. The liquid gets low. The paste thickens into a sauce, then a glaze, then a coating. Now you stir. Constantly. The sugars caramelize against the hot pot. The beef pulls apart at the edges but stays chewy at the center. When there's no more liquid and every piece is lacquered dark brown, you're done.
Not every dish uses all four pillars equally. Jin hoom is salt, sweet, heat, and depth. Sour doesn't belong here. The system is flexible. Fish sauce for salt, palm sugar for sweet, dried chili for warmth, tua nao for that fermented backbone. The principles hold, but they don't force themselves where they're not needed. Eat this with sticky rice. Only sticky rice. Tear off a piece, press it against a chunk of glazed beef. That bite is the entire history of Lanna highland cooking: concentrated, spiced, built for cool mountain evenings around a khan tok.
Jin hoom (จิ๊นฮุม) belongs to the Lanna culinary tradition of northern Thailand, where 'jin' (จิ๊น) is the Kam Muang (Northern Thai dialect) word for meat and 'hoom' (ฮุม) refers to covering or enclosing, describing how the paste envelops the beef as liquid evaporates. The dish's spice profile, with coriander seed, cumin, star anise, and cassia, maps directly onto the old Burmese and Yunnanese trade routes that ran through Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Mae Hong Son for centuries. The dry-braising technique likely evolved as a preservation method in the cooler northern climate, where concentrating meat in a spice glaze extended its shelf life before refrigeration, making jin hoom a practical cousin to the sun-dried jin som (fermented meat) and jin kem (salted meat) traditions of the same region.
Quantity
800g
cut into 2-inch chunks
Quantity
8
deseeded, soaked in warm water 15 minutes, drained
Quantity
1 tablespoon
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
5 cm piece
sliced
Quantity
3 stalks
thinly sliced from the bulb end
Quantity
6 cloves
Quantity
5
sliced
Quantity
2
chopped
Quantity
2 tablespoons
crumbled
Quantity
1 teaspoon sliced, or 1/2 teaspoon ground
Quantity
3, whole
Quantity
1 small piece, about 5 cm
Quantity
3 cups
Quantity
3 tablespoons
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
1 1/2 tablespoons
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
sliced
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| beef shank or chuckcut into 2-inch chunks | 800g |
| dried red chilies (prik haeng)deseeded, soaked in warm water 15 minutes, drained | 8 |
| coriander seeds (met phak chi) | 1 tablespoon |
| cumin seeds (yira) | 1 teaspoon |
| black peppercorns (prik thai dam) | 1 teaspoon |
| ginger (khing)sliced | 5 cm piece |
| lemongrass (takhrai)thinly sliced from the bulb end | 3 stalks |
| garlic (kratiam) | 6 cloves |
| shallots (hom daeng)sliced | 5 |
| cilantro roots (rak phak chi)chopped | 2 |
| tua nao (fermented soybean disc)crumbled | 2 tablespoons |
| fresh turmeric (khamin) | 1 teaspoon sliced, or 1/2 teaspoon ground |
| star anise (poi kak bua) | 3, whole |
| cassia bark or cinnamon stick | 1 small piece, about 5 cm |
| water | 3 cups |
| fish sauce (nam pla) | 3 tablespoons |
| dark soy sauce (si ew dam) | 2 tablespoons |
| palm sugar (nam tan pip) | 1 1/2 tablespoons |
| sticky rice (khao niew) | for serving |
| pickled garlic (kratiam dong) (optional) | for serving |
| raw shallots (optional)sliced | for serving |
| fresh cilantro sprigs (optional) | for serving |
Set a dry pan over medium-low heat. Add the coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and black peppercorns. Shake the pan constantly. Two minutes, maybe three. You'll smell it before you see it: a warm, earthy, slightly sweet aroma rising from the pan. The coriander will darken a shade. The cumin will start to pop. Pull them off the heat the moment the fragrance intensifies. Burnt spices are bitter spices, and there's no recovering from that. Let them cool for a minute, then they go into the mortar.
Start with the toasted spices in the granite mortar. Pound them to a coarse powder. Hard, steady strikes. Then add the soaked chilies and pound until they break down into the spice powder, forming a rough red mass. Next goes the ginger, the lemongrass, the cilantro roots, and the turmeric. Pound and scrape, pound and scrape. These fibrous ingredients take the most work. Keep going until you can't see individual strands of lemongrass anymore. Now the garlic and shallots, pounded in until the paste is wet and fragrant. Last, the tua nao. Crumble it in and pound it through. The paste should be rough but cohesive, deep red-orange with flecks of yellow from the turmeric. Your kitchen should smell like a Chiang Mai spice market. If it doesn't, keep pounding.
Put the beef chunks in a heavy-bottomed pot. Don't brown them first. Jin hoom isn't a Western braise. The browning happens at the end, when the glaze caramelizes. Scrape every bit of the kreung tam over the meat and toss it with your hands until every chunk is coated. Add the water, fish sauce, dark soy sauce, and palm sugar. Drop in the whole star anise and cassia bark. Stir once. The liquid should just cover the meat. If it doesn't, add a splash more water. That's it. Simple. Everything in one pot.
Bring the pot to a boil over high heat. You'll see the paste bloom across the surface of the water, turning it a murky reddish-brown. Skim any foam from the surface. Drop the heat to the lowest simmer your stove can manage. Partially cover the pot, leaving a gap for steam to escape. Now you wait. One and a half to two hours. Check every thirty minutes. The beef should be gently bubbling, not actively boiling. If it boils hard, the meat toughens before the collagen has time to break down. By the ninety-minute mark, the meat should be tender when you press a chunk with a spoon, and the liquid should be reduced by about two-thirds.
This is where jin hoom becomes jin hoom. Remove the lid completely. Increase the heat to medium. The remaining liquid should be thick and dark, the consistency of a thin gravy. Over the next twenty to thirty minutes, it will reduce further. Stir every few minutes at first. As the liquid gets lower, stir more often. The paste is concentrating now. The sugars from the palm sugar and dark soy are caramelizing against the bottom and sides of the pot. You'll hear the sizzle change from a wet bubble to a sticky crackle. That's the transition point. Every piece of beef should be coated in a dark brown, glossy glaze. The pot should be nearly dry.
In the last five minutes, reduce the heat to medium-low and stir constantly. The beef should be pulling apart slightly at the edges but still holding its shape. Every surface should be lacquered with the concentrated paste, dark and shiny. Pick up a piece. It should feel sticky. Taste it. The flavor should be intensely concentrated: salty, sweet, spiced, with the deep funk of the tua nao underneath. If it's bland, add a splash more fish sauce and keep reducing. Fish out the star anise and cassia bark if you see them. Pull the pot off the heat.
Transfer the glazed beef to a serving bowl. Scatter sliced raw shallots and cilantro over the top. Set pickled garlic (kratiam dong) alongside, two or three cloves per person. The pickled garlic cuts through the richness of the glaze like nothing else. Serve with sticky rice (khao niew) from a kratip basket. Tear off a piece of rice, press it against a chunk of beef, get some of that dark caramelized paste on there. That's the bite. That's the whole point of two and a half hours of patience. Fai Thai, baby.
1 serving (about 190g)
Culinary guides, cultural storytelling, and the editorial depth that makes cooking meaningful.
Discover Culinary Explorer
Chef Fai
Lanna's kreung tam breaks from Central Thai rules: ginger over galangal, cumin and coriander from Burmese spice routes, tamarind for sour instead of lime. The North has its own system, and this curry is its crown.
Chef Fai
The kreung tam lives twice. Yesterday's gaeng hang le hits a screaming wok with glass noodles and bamboo, and the Lanna kitchen proves that a day-old curry isn't a leftover. It's a foundation waiting for its second life.
Chef Fai
No coconut. No compromise. Lanna's jungle curry is built on a kreung tam of dried spices and ginger, simmered in water, and loaded with wild herbs your grandmother foraged from the mountain. The paste is the principle. The herbs are the land.
Chef Fai
No coconut palms grow in the northern highlands, so Lanna cooks built curries on water, pork stock, and a kreung tam loaded with ginger and Burmese-route spices. The young jackfruit soaks up every drop.