Pad Thai (ผัดไทย)

Background Pad Thai is one of the most popular Thai dishes for both inside and outside Thailand. For Thai people Pad Thai is a single dish and this means we eat it alone not with steam rice. I mention this because I have seen some Americans eat Pad Thai with rice. In Thailand, Pad Thai is considered cheap food and is very to find range from street food carts to fine restaurants. O In Thailand Regular Pad Thai (no shrimp, or meat) costs around 30 Baht or around $1. For Pad Thai with shrimp can start from 50 Baht or $1.7 to 200 Baht or around $6. Pad Thai that costs $6 in Thailand you will get it with jumbo shrimp or ix with hight quality seafood. Mostly, regular Thai people don't bother making Pad Thai by themselves since it's cheap and easy to find. Moreover, Pad Thai consists of so many ingredients and not easy to make it's right or good. The best Pad Thai places in Thailand they make only Pad Thai and Fried Muscle หอยทอด (this two dishes are the best friend). My most favorite Pad Thai place in Bangkok sells only Pad Thai and the cook makes it super good. Original Pad Thai that we have in Thailand consists of more ingredient than I show I this recipe; for instance, dried shrimp,pickled radish,chives, banana blossom. And most Thai restaurants outside Thailand don't include these ingredients in their Pad Thai. For the good Pad Thai places in Thailand, the rice noodle that used for Pad Thai is the special one (not regular rice noodle)because good Pad Thai noodle must not be soft but not too soft like the one for noodle soup and we call this special rice noodle Sen Chan เส้นจันทน์. Tofu used for Pad Thai in Thailand normally has yellow color outside and firm. Original Pad Thai will serve with fresh bean sprout, banana blossom, pieces of lime, grounded peanut and we love to add fish sauce, sugar, power dried chili to the dish. Authentic Pad Thai don't have any kind of vegetable except bean sprout and garlic chive but most restaurants in the US. like to add some vegetable like carrot or broccoli to the food.

Variations Most Authentic Pad Thai in Thailand doesn't have any kind of meat except dried shrimp. Original Pad Thai contains noodle, egg, tofu, bean sprout and other seasoning ingredients. But for more fancy (more expensive) Pad Thai will serve with shrimp and the good restaurant use jumbo fresh water shrimps (กุ้งก้ามกราม). Most best Pad Thai place where they are specialize in making Pad Thai, cook the shrimp separately and just top the jumbo shrimp over regular Pad Thai. It's hard to find Pad Thai with chicken in Thailand but it's common for Pad Thai in America. It's not wrong to add chicken into Pad Thai but it's just different from the original recipe from the mother country. As I said regular Pad Thai has no meat except dried shrimp and special Pad Thai is added shrimp but Thai also has the other special type of Pad Thai that originally from the East of Thailand and this special one usually serve with crab. So, in Thailand seafood is the popular type of meat to add to Pad thai. Another option of Pad Thai is Woon Sen Pad Thai. Woon Sen (วุ้นเส้น) means glass noodle or silver noodle or bean thread depending on what would you like to call it but mainly each name is the same thing. So you can use glass noodle instead of rice noodle and actually I really love this option since the glass noodle is softer and I like it texture more than rice noodle. Some restaurants in Thailand wrap Pad Thai in omelet and we call this recipe Pad Thai Ho Kai(ho = wrap and Kai = egg). This recipe has a great presentation but maybe too much protein for someone. If you don't like noodle, you also can make Pad Thai with out noodle but add more bean sprout and tofu instead. My aunt love to order this when she was young and don't want to gain weight and it taste good as well.

Full Recipe in PDF