Chao Sua – Rice Cracker with Chicken Floss and Seaweed

Times change pretty quickly these days, so when I think of foods I ate as a child that were pivotal or unmistakable, I wonder if kids growing up these days have experienced it on the same level or even at all. A good example is the whole thing around chicken feet. As a kid it was a really popular dish and something that was common place. It seems the older I get, the less common it is, and even less common to see the younger generation partake. I sometimes wonder if meat floss has suffered a similar fate.

Meat floss is basically meats that have been dehydrated and shredded into a small, floss like texture. It was one of the many ways that many areas in Asia were able to preserve their meats for longer and ration them out. The benefit of meat floss is that the resulting product was very light and airy, and made a great topping on anything from rice to congee.It has an almost soft, cotton candy like texture and was a big part of our diets growing up. Because it’s essentially fluffy preserved meat, it gave the illusion of abundance, similar to popcorn, despite not being that much actual meat if you were to compress it back down.

While the typical meat floss was pretty popular and came in all sorts of varieties, pork and chicken were the most common, and were usually combined with seaweed and sesame to give it more flavour and variety in texture. To this day it’s used in all sorts of cuisine like pastries and of course, rice crackers.

Chao Sua is a popular brand in Thailand, and based on my understanding, are known for their meat floss products, pork crackers and rice crackers. I kept seeing these products in the grocery stores and figured why not give it a try.

These things are pretty wild in terms of variation in size. They go from very small shrapnel pieces to very big pieces that are almost the size of the box. These smell like my childhood, by which I mean I consumed a lot of meat floss and seaweed, often together at the same time.

As far as rice crackers go the texture is quite typical – it’s very crisp, a bit airy and melts away very quickly. Think rice crispy cereal. The chicken floss helps to add some slight chewiness once the rice cracker melts away, and the seaweed stays behind a little longer.The texture is hard to describe to someone whose never had chicken floss, or even pork floss. It’s kind of like having a chicken jerky that’s very dry, but fluffy so the dryness isn’t as noticeable.

The floss has a distinct chicken flavour to it, with a bit of sweetness which is probably the marinade used to help preserve it. Also, probably some added sugar. The seaweed adds some sweetness to it so you have a pleasantly sweet fluffy chicken taste, along with the flavour of the rice cracker itself. The whole thing comes together magically, and I daresay you’ll be hard pressed to find a non-vegan who won’t enjoy this.

Despite being quite pricey for how much you actually get, I think the experience and quality of the product more than make up for it, and is something everyone ought to try at least once. Except again, for the vegans. This is actual chicken so it’s a no go for you guys.