Pad Thai Recipe (with Chicken or Shrimp) - Cooking Classy (2024)

FAQs

What makes Pad Thai taste so good? ›

If it's only made of those ingredients, what then makes it so unique? A Pad Thai has tamarind, fish sauce, garlic, dried shrimp, palm sugar, and red chili pepper. These simple ingredients make Pad Thai a bowl of five tastes—salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.

Pad Thai is stir-fry dish made with rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, or tofu, peanuts, a scrambled egg and bean sprouts. The ingredients are sautéed together in a wok and tossed in a delicious Pad Thai sauce.

When it's sold in restaurants outside Thailand, the noodles are sometimes bright orange – that's because sauces or spices, like paprika, have been used instead of tamarind. Authentic Pad Thai is a light reddish-brown colour.

The crisp vegetables, savory noodles, and tangy sauce come together for its distinct taste. The eggs add a dash of protein. You'll get a helping of many foods, all in one dish. If you're looking for a delicious new meal to make for dinner soon, you'll love our spicy pad thai recipe.

The name of this establishment refers to the five flavors (ha/ห้า=five, roat/รส=flavors) which are present in a good pad Thai: salty, sweet, sour, spicy, and savory.

Pad Thai Sauce is made with fish sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar and tamarind. Tamarind is the ingredient that is the heart and soul of Pad Thai sauce, giving the sauce the sour flavour that Pad Thai is known for. It's an ingredient used in South East Asian cooking, like this Malaysian Beef Rendang.

Although the ingredients in pad Thai are generally pretty healthy, the calories can still add up fast. Just one cup of a typical pad Thai has about 400 calories and 17 grams of fat, as well as loads of sodium.

Ingredients. An authentic pad thai sauce is actually very simple. There are technically only 3 ingredients: the sweet, the salty and the sour. But because we want this to be a time-saver, I've also add the shallots and the garlic into the sauce so we don't have to chop and sauté them on the day.

Traditionally, Pad Thai is a Thai stir-fried noodle dish that often includes protein such as shrimp or chicken.

Traditional Pad Thai usually combines tamarind paste, fish sauce, dried shrimp, and palm sugar, creating a sweet, sour, and salty taste balance. It commonly includes tofu, dried shrimp, bean sprouts, and peanuts. However, Americanized versions might swap tamarind for ketchup, making it sweeter and less complex.

What is a substitute for lime juice in Pad Thai? ›

Lemon for 'Pad Thai' is still alright if lime is not available. Lime works better to balance the salty (soy and fish sauce) in the dish.

Thai Food and Travel and Hot Thai Kitchen say there are times American versions of pad Thai will also use paprika to make it red in an effort to make the dish more appealing to customers, but neither ketchup nor paprika are ingredients commonly found in Thai kitchens.

It can definitely be a part of a balanced, well-rounded diet. While pad thai includes many nutritious ingredients, its sodium content is considerably high. You can reduce its sodium by requesting the eatery go easy on the sauce and salt-contributing condiments.

TAMARIND SUBSTITUTION

Although ketchup is a common replacement for tamarind paste, we prefer this tasty mixture: 1/4 cup (50 mL) tomato paste, 2 tbsp (30 mL) rice vinegar or freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice, 2 tbsp (30 mL) Worcestershire, 2 garlic cloves, minced, 1 tbsp (15 mL) brown sugar and 1 tbsp (15 mL) water.

Thai (ไทย) – that's obvious. Pad (ผัด) – means fried. There are however, countless Thai dishes with the word Pad in it. The main ingredient in Pad Thai is rice noodles which are stir-fried. So, if you were to roughly translate Pad Thai, you'd have to say the dish is stir-fried noodles Thai style.

A perfectly cooked pad Thai should have a balance of flavors — tangy, sweet, spicy and salty, Trang says. This comes from a blend of tamarind paste, palm sugar, crushed red chili peppers and fish sauce. Traditional pad Thai sauces follow a basic formula of a third each of palm sugar, tamarind paste and fish sauce.

Some noodle stalls in Thailand use a sweetened black soy sauce in combination with sugar, and ground dried chillies made with darkly roasted whole dried chillies, producing pad thai with a very different color and flavor balance than what Americans have become accustomed to.

Tamarind concentrate: This is the starring ingredient in pad Thai that gives the sauce its signature tangy, sweet, and fruity flavor. Granted, some American Thai restaurants have switched to using ketchup in its place, which gives the dish a notably different and less-tangy flavor.