Pad Thai Recipe : The Authentic Version

Posted: August 3, 2012 | Author: The High Heel Gourmet | Filed under: Clicking in the Kitchen, Dinner, Lunch, Noodles, Stir fry, Thai | Tags: Asian, Food, Noodles, PadThai, Recipe, Stir fry, Thai food, Vegetarian |48 Comments

Okay, after weve agreed upon Whats not supposed to be in PadThai, lets see whats hot. In this episode Im going to give you the recipe and ingredients with which I make my Pad Thai. Ingredients for 4 portions 1) The Sauce (Can be made in advance) 1.1) Tamarind pulp 1/4 cup 1.2) Coconut palm sugar 1/4 cup 1.3) Fish sauce 1/4 cup Tip: mixing tamarind pulp and palm sugar over low heat will help soften the palm sugar, then turn off the heat before you add the fish sauce, so your whole house would not be deodorized with the fish sauce flavor. Otherwise, you are simply mixing the ingredients together. Aways prepare the sauce first? Ive heard a lot of people say to make PadThai you need to make the sauce ahead of time. Its not a bad idea, but you can also make the Pad Thai without making your sauce first. The street vendors usually make the sauce ahead so they can make their PadThai fast and consistent. The advantage of making sauce in advance is you can take your sweet time, adjusting the taste to your preference. There is another reason why you would want to make the Pad Thai sauce before hand. In making Pad Thai, you have four main foundation ingredients, three condiments, noodles, two protein options, and two vegetables. Thats a total of 12 ingredients (not counting the oil) going in apan thats sitting over a full blast fire. It makes your life so much easier to combine the three condiments together. That eliminates three unnecessary steps, which would please Frank B. Gilbreth, Sr. but also gives the Pad Thai in the pan less chance to be burned while youre adjusting the taste.

The Pad Thai street vendors in the old time didnt make the sauce ahead, but they had their perfect measuring spoons for each of their condiments to control the consistency of their dishes. Since they werent competing for speed, they did just fine. My childhood memory buying PadThai was I had to wait and watch the merchant make my Pad Thai order right there in front of me, and the way to tell the good Pad Thai vendor was to look for a long line, because the good vendors made no more than three orders at a time, so the customers had to wait. The ingredients arent written in stone, so they can be substituted for. These are the recommended choices for substitution. Coconut palm sugar is not that hard to find anymore, Amazon is selling them, but if you have a hard time, you can use brown sugar. Fish sauce can be substituted with soy sauce for the vegetarian, preferably mushroom soy sauce. Please do not use Kikkoman. If you really cant find fish sauce but want to use it, try anchovies mixed with sea salt. Tamarind pulp can be replaced with vinegar. I used balsamic vinegar when I made this dish in Italy once and it came out pretty good. It gave a pleasant flavor that was quite unique and not that far off from tamarind pulp, but I felt like I had wasted the aged-in-oak-barrels-for-30-years balsamic vinegar the moment I combined it with the stinky fish sauce! Mix the three ingredients without heat. The portion ratio is 1:1:1 as a start, then you need to taste the mixture and fine tune the balance. Each ingredient always come in a different strength so you have to taste the mixture every time you make it. The right sauce is a balanced mixture of salty, sour, and sweet. I like to lead with saltiness, following with sour and then a finish of sweetness, because at the point of serving the dish you will get a wedge of lime and a pile of granulated sugar on the side to adjust the final taste. So you can keep both the sweet and sour flavors mild for now. You can either mix them together and use them that day or make a batch of sauce ahead of the time and store it in the refrigerator. If you have leftover sauce from a batch after cooking, you should combine it all together and heat the mixture to a full boil and then store it in a clean jar. I dont suggest boiling the sauce until it thickens because you dont really need thick sauce unless you need to save the storage space. If you make a thick sauce, you will have to add water when you toss the sauce in with the noodles anyway, so why waste time and energy? Once you have got the sauce ready then were ready to prep the other sections of the ingredients. Remember, I told you four foundation ingredients, three condiments, one noodle, two proteins (optional), two vegetables and three seasonings. This is how I remember ALL the ingredients without turning the page in my notes or any recipe book.

2) The Foundation Tip: The following ingredients need to be chopped into small pieces. 2.1) Chopped shallots 1/4 cup, 1 tablespoon for each serving portion.

Alternatively, you can use very strong-flavored onion such as a big red onion along with one teaspoon of chopped garlic if you absolutely cant find shallots. I have to add a little bit of garlic because onion cant give the pungent aroma the way I like. I dont normally use garlic in my Pad Thai though, but you can use it if you prefer. 2.2) Chopped salted preserved radishes or turnips 1/4 cup, 1 tablespoon for each portion (Chi Po Kem).

This is an important ingredient. I only allow the sweet preserves of the same root vegetable, radish or turnip (Chi Po Wan) to be the substitution. I gave you two names, turnip and radish, because they use both names on the packages. You shouldnt be using pickle carrots, cucumber, okra or mustard greens. You can order them from these online stores Importfood.com, Grocery Thai.com Without this ingredient, you would be making Farang (foreigner) Pad Thai. 2.3) Pressed tofu cut into a thin pieces (1/4 x 1/4 x 1/2) approximately 1/2 cup, 2 tablespoons for each portion (add more for the vegetarian).

more for the vegetarian).

Pressed Tofu is the firmest of all tofu. It will withstand vigorous stirring and still come out whole and chewy. Most firm tofu will break apart in the process. However, If you cant find it you can get firm tofu and you can press it yourself by following this simple method of How to Press Tofu by about.com. 2.4) Salted small dried shrimps, soaked in water until softened 1/4 cup, 1 tablespoon for each portion (skip this for the vegetarians).

I use medium-sized dried shrimp. Their size is about 3/8 in diameter. I dont use the small size because I cant find small shrimps that have already been shelled. If you cant find medium or small sized shrimp, you can chop or grind the bigger size. This might present an interesting opportunity for a substitution because its there for the umami taste. I used dried salted abalone once when I made this dish in Hong-Kong. It came out very delicious but dried abalone is quite expensive. You are welcome to try other substitutions such as salted dried cuttle fish or salted dried scallop, but Im not so sure about salted dried fish because it might give too much fishy taste. If you try one, let me know hows your Pad Thai turns out.

3) The Noodles Thin rice noodles, also called Rice Sticks or Banh Pho soaked in cold water until they soften, but not too soft, and loosely packed, about 1-2 cup per portion (depend on how much carb youre willing to eat)

top left: fresh noodles, top right: pliable stage after soaking the noodles in cold water, bottom left: dry Chantaboon noodles, bottom right: Chantaboon noodles after soaking in water If you have an Asian market near by and want to use fresh rice noodles, soak them in cold water anyway but for a shorter period. You want your noodles to be pliable. If theyre too soft they will turn into mush in the wok. You want your PadThai to be dry and the noodles soft but stretchy, not soft and mushy.

Actually there are more noodle choices than you might think. The rice stick, banh pho or Sen-lek in Thai is the most well known one. Then there is glass noodle or cellophane noodle, the clear noodles made with mung bean flour is a very good choice of noodle as well since they absorb the flavor really well. I made Pad Thai with Shirataki noodle, that contain no food calories by themselves. You can also make Pad Thai without noodles at all. This time were focusing on the traditional Pad Thai so we will be using the small rice sticks. I will show you the many variations of PadThai later on in the next episode. 4) The Proteins 4.1) 4 eggs, one for each portion The original Pad Thai never had major meat as part of the ingredients because the Thais are not the big meat eaters. Their diet consists of mostly vegetables and carbs, with a little bit of protein, mainly from eggs, small fishes, shrimps, and crabs. They might eat chicken or pork here and there, but beef only once in a long while. They are not big into killing large animals. The first protein introduced to the dish is of course, an egg. Early on even the egg was an optionafter all, the dish already had tofu and dried shrimps. The merchant would normally ask every customer You want it with or without egg? I remember not liking the Pad Thai with egg at all, but the adults would want me to eat it with egg. So it was such a treat when they had no time to go buy food for me and gave me money to buy my own Pad Thai instead. I would hold the money tight in my hand, go to my favorite Pad Thai vendor at the open market by myself and order my Pad Thai without egg. That generally made me felt like an adult even as I saved the rest of the money. (The one without egg would cost less, of course.) To then buy a popsicle like a child with the saved money didnt really ruin my adulthood feeling the least bit. In fact, it was the proper way to celebrate my temporary maturity. 4.2) Fresh shrimps, medium size, peeled and deveined, about 6-8 per each serving

I like to butterflied the shrimp because its going to twist beautifully when it cooked Shrimp were introduced into Pad Thai not so long ago. I would say about twenty something years ago I started to see the fancy PadThai with fresh prawns show up in some restaurants menus. In general, Pad Thai was not a restaurant item. If one wanted to get an order of Pad Thai, one had to search the street vendors in a local open air market, order and sit down to eat on whatever flimsy, wobbly chair and sticky, unsanitary table they provided. You would be so lucky if you dont have to share the table with strangers. If thats not romantic enough, one can order the take home Pad Thai, wrapped in a piece of newspaper lined with banana leaves. Notwithstanding this, when restaurants attempted to fancify the street food, the street vendors started offering Pad Thai with an option of fresh shrimp too. There is no such thing as Chicken Pad Thai or Beef Pad Thai served in Thailand. Well, they might serve them now but only in the areas populated with Farang (foreigners). Actually, to the Thais, thats not only unheard of but also grosses them out. I dont recommend it either unless you are allergic to shrimp. 5) Vegetables 5.1) Bean sprouts loosely packed, 1-2 cups for each portion, half of them for the wok fry and the rest to serve fresh with the finished Pad Thai. You cant miss out on the bean sprouts. If you cant find bean sprouts, dont even consider making Pad Thai. Im THAT serious. Mung bean sprouts only, NO soy bean sprouts, radish sprouts, alfalfa sprouts or other kind of sprouts. 5.2) Garlic Chives cut the bottom half inch off each chive and discard. Then cut the next 3-4 from the bottom from each, and save them to serve fresh with the finished noodles. Then cut the flat leaves into 1-1/2 long pieces. You will need about 1/4 cup for each portion.

Dont let me see green onion or scallions in your Pad Thai. Garlic chive has a flat leaf, and a flat, green stalkif you can blow air into a hollow stem, that is, the green part of the stalk, youve got the wrong herb! 5.3) Other than those two vegetables, you can use banana blossoms (Hua Pli), Tiger Herbal or Asiatic Pennywort (Bai Bua Bok) all of them could be served with the finished Pad Thai. 6) Seasoning I know, I know, it gets a little tedious. But you followed me this far. This is just the last touch. On the other hand, this last touch reflects the real Thai culture, which doesnt standardize the taste when it comes to food. Everyone can tailor their dishes to their own liking with these seasonings. 6.1) Crushed peanuts 1 full tablespoon for each serving 6.2) Wedges of lime 6.3) Granulated sugar 1 teaspoon for each serving 6.4) Dried crushed chili pepper as much or as little as you need

HaaaaI feel like I have written a novel, but I havent give you the most important part: how to make it. Method You would need a high-heat stove. If you have the electric stove, you wont be able to make a good Pad Thai, despite the fact that you follow all the instructions I gave you precisely. Anyhow, there is a way to compensateplease read the tip for electric stoves at the end.

Tip: Remember, make only 1-2 portions at a time. DO NOT try to make more than that! 1) Heat a pan, or preferably a wok, over high heat, add about 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and wait until its smoking. 2) Add the shallots and fry until they sizzle and release their aroma, no more than half a minute, if the wok is hot enough. 3) Add the three other foundation ingredients: dried shrimps, salted turnip and tofu, all together, toss them around,

3) Add the three other foundation ingredients: dried shrimps, salted turnip and tofu, all together, toss them around, keeping them moving. I call these foundation for a reason. Theyre going to release the aroma that is necessary for the whole dish into the oil. Some of that will be absorbed by the tofu and some will be absorbed later by the noodles. Fry until the tofu changes color. You can add about a tablespoon of water if the ingredients get too dry. 4) Add the noodles and then the sauce. You will need about 3-4 tablespoons of sauce. Toss them quickly, making sure that the sauce coats all the noodles. If the noodles are too dry or stick together, add a little water, one tablespoon at a time, and toss quickly to separate them. You shouldnt have to use more than 2-3 tablespoons of water. 5) Push the noodles to one side of the wok, add another splash of oil, about another tablespoon, wait until the oil gets hot at this point its only take seconds, then crack the egg and add directly in the hot oil, scramble it a little and then flip the noodles that you pushed to the side back over the egg. 6) While you wait for the egg to set, add the shrimps and start tossing everything together again. Cook until the shrimp get pink. It shouldnt take long. 7) Lower the heat, or turn off the heat if you are using cast iron wok, and add the garlic chives and bean sprouts, toss them around, mixing them well with the noodles and all the other ingredients. The leftover heat will cook the vegetables and keep the noodles from overcooking. Toss them until the vegetables are soft.

8) Put the Pad Thai on the plate and serve with all the seasonings ON THE SIDE, together with more fresh bean sprouts and the garlic chives that you saved.

9) Now, rinse and repeat until you have servings for everyone. If youre using a non-stick wok or pan, you might not need to rinse but make sure that there is NOTHING left on the wok. In the next episode I will show you the varietions of Pad Thai. Rest assured, I dont mean Chicken Pad Thai or Beef Pad Thai indeed! Tips for the electric stove user: Heat your stove with the wok or the pan on until its smoky, make sure that all ingredients are at room temperature so you when you add the ingredients, it wont lower your wok temperature that much. Wait until the contents in the wok are hot before you add another ingredients.

The Pad Thai Trilogy has already been completed. It consisted of three parts. Pad Thai Trilogy, Episode I: Whats not this is the most important part of the Pad Thai Trilogy, Episode II: The Authentic recipe Pad Thai Trilogy, Episode III: The Variations of Pad Thai

48 Comments on Pad Thai Recipe : The Authentic Version

1. Darren says: March 13, 2013 at 12:11 am Looks fantastic. I love Farang Pad Thai (sadly all I can get at local Thai restaurants) and have been looking for a genuinely authentic recipe. I have a local Asian market close by and can get fresh Thai herbs and vegetables shipped in. When Ive tried out your recipe will report back. Reply