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| Sai Oeur Yai Pee |
| Written by Panida Suvapiromchote | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 20 December 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thai sausages are differently cooked according to the regions. For instance, the northeastern sausages are sour while northern sausages are made spicy. When I moved to Chiang Mai 24 years ago, I first tried northern sausages or “Sai Oeur” at Waroros Market and found this local specialty surprisingly delicious. Later on, I visited Lamphun and a local resident recommended me to try the best of Lamphun spicy sausages at Sai Oeur Yai Pee (Granny Pee’s Spicy Sausage).
After I managed to find my way to Granny Pee's Spicy Sausage Shop, I discovered that the recommendation was not at all an exaggeration because the sausage tasted really delicious. Its flavour has a unique smoky taste and the sausages are grilled, not fried as typically practiced at the markets or restaurants. I normally entertain my guests with Granny Pee's spicy sausages as appetizers. The sausages can be kept frozen for a month (but they hardly ever last longer than two weeks!). All you have to do is to just defrost them in the microwave and bake them for 6 to 8 minutes to stimulate its aroma. I recently met Mrs. Sripha Harnhirun, the 59 year old daughter of Granny Pee, who had inherited the Sai Oeur Yai Pee business. Sripha said that she began learning how to make spicy sausages from her mother at the age of 22. A native of Lamphun, her mother was originally a rice noodle maker but switched to selling northern foods such as spicy sausages, pork cracklings and Nam Prik Noom (grilled green chilly dip) when manual rice noodle making was replaced by machines introduced by Chinese traders over 40 years ago. "It took us some time to develop the right and unique taste of the spicy sausages. At the beginning, the taste was too mild and customers from Bangkok hinted to my mother that she should add more herbs to obtain the flavour that customers enjoyed", she added. Sripha revealed that "The spicy sausage is made from ground pork meat mixed with Thai herbs of galanga, lemon grass, cumin, garlic, shallots and dry chillies and some other ingredients. The mixture is then stuffed into natural cases as sausage sticks with strings of banana jute tying their ends. The next process is to slow grill them with charcoals of either longan or tamarind trees wood mixed with coconut husks to obtain the smoky taste". Sripha tries to keep her products as clean as possible by using soft paper to absorb the grease and to get rid of ashes from the grilling. The sausages are then wrapped with plastic coated paper and neatly put in plastic bags. The spicy sausage costs 280 baht a kilo. With a proud and happy look on her face, she recalled that the shop used to wrap the spicy sausages in the large Tong Toeng leaves which were widely used over 25 years ago and tied the packages with bamboo pins. As this wild tree has become rare, it is impossible to retain this northern folk and environment friendly tradition.
Most of her customers are local residents from Chiang Mai and visitors from other provinces. "Our customers come as far as Yala, a southern province of Thailand, and many have bought large quantities to take back with them to the United States, England and Japan", she noted. Sripha is currently teaching her son, "M", the art of making the northern Sai Oeur as she intends to pass on this family food business to the third generation. She hopes her son would take the business seriously to preserve the tradition and uniqueness of their Sai Oeur Yai Pee. Sai Oeur Yai Pee Shop is located on Rob Muang Nok Road in Lamphun town and it takes only 30 minutes of driving from Chiang Mai. More information can be obtained at Tel. 053-561-381. BON APPETITE! |
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