Years ago I had, several times, bbq'ed meat with an Issan style dipping sauce which included beef bile. It was incredibly moorish and I craved it so much that I tried making in NZ with coffee as I couldn't get any bile.

The coffee chilli saice was good....but not quite the same.

Anyway, I bought a full gall bladder today from the market, but I'm way down south and not a lot of Issan-wise home cooks...so I was wondering if anyone knows how to firstly prepare the bile (I think it's boiled, maybe with fish sauce?) as I do not know, and secondly, how to use the prepared bile to make the dipping sauce.

Cheers

The references to it that I've seen suggest that it's used "raw."

And that brings me to the bile. Biologically speaking, bile is a greenish fluid that is secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder to aid in digestion. Culinarily speaking, it’s bitter as hell. A spoonful is a nuclear bomb of bitterness. It’s kinda like if a Double IPA were brewed from a zillion bittermelons and a touch of battery acid. So yeah. That’s what bile tastes like.

http://burntlumpiablog.com/2011/10/papaitan-offal-bile-soup.html

Bile juice (น้ำดี nam dee) and gastric juice (น้ำเพี้ย naam phiia) are added sometimes as bitter seasonings for beef or buffalo laap.

http://www.thaifoodmaster.com/

There is also a kind of larbcalled larb leut (Lao: ເລືອດ) or lu (Thai: ลู่). This dish is made with minced raw pork or beef, raw blood, kidney, fat and bile, and mixed with spices, crispy fried onions, fresh herbs and other ingredients.

Hadn't heard of this bile dipping sauce before, but this may be what your looking for. The second of the 2 dipping sauce recipes here (under "2.สูตรขม") contains bile, fish sauce, chilli, salt, toasted (ground) rice, shallots, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves.
http://goodmenuthai.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/blog-post_4698.html

Hadn't heard of this bile dipping sauce before, but this may be what your looking for. The second of the 2 dipping sauce recipes here (under "2.สูตรขม") contains bile, fish sauce, chilli, salt, toasted (ground) rice, shallots, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves.

http://goodmenuthai.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/blog-post_4698.html

That sounds delish. As a dip, but also as the sauce for any yam (ยำ ) dish....toss it with bean noodles, or sliced het khao etc.

As I've been helpfully informed above, it appears it's used raw. I just worry about the keeping qualities.

The dip I make with coffee is lime juice, shallots, chilli, strong coffee, fish sauce...mixed to taste (equal parts as a starting point, and you can add sugar if your shallots don't sweeten up the lime)....the effect is a balance of sweet, sour, bitter, salt, all 4 major tastes, plus the chilli spiciness....almost perfect! The bile instead of coffee adds umami..absolute perfection to get all 5 tastes balanced and working off each other.

Thanks guys.

Hadn't heard of this bile dipping sauce before, but this may be what your looking for. The second of the 2 dipping sauce recipes here (under "2.สูตรขม") contains bile, fish sauce, chilli, salt, toasted (ground) rice, shallots, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves.

http://goodmenuthai.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/blog-post_4698.html

Looking at the quantities.....that would be extremely bitter. I envisioned just a few drops per tablespoon of fish sauce etc.

and don't forget to buy cow shit and blood, in brown and red plastic bags respectively, while you're at it. These are the kind of things I just try once so I can say I tried it. Like placenta soup. Anyway, my wife says to just prepare your (beef) dish with chili etc as normal, and at the end add bile, or blood, or shit, or all at once. I have only seen it being cooked on the earthenware barbecues they have here in Isaan.