Intermedio

Pad Thai

Name: Pad Thai
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: Thai
Ingredients: 160 g Dried flat rice noodles, 5 mm; 3 tbsp Tamarind paste; 3 tbsp Palm sugar; 2.5 tbsp Fish sauce; 200 g Raw prawns, peeled; 120 g Firm tofu, cut into small cubes; 3 tbsp Preserved sweet radish (chai po), chopped; 2 tbsp Dried shrimp, chopped; 2 Eggs; 4 Garlic cloves, chopped; 1 Shallot, sliced; 150 g Bean sprouts; 60 g Garlic chives, cut into 4 cm lengths; 4 tbsp Roasted peanuts, crushed; 1 tsp Dried chilli flakes; 2 Limes; 4 tbsp Oil

Rice noodles fried in a tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce glaze with prawns, egg, tofu and pickled radish — cooked one portion at a time, because two portions in a wok is a braise.

Fuente

Receta de Bangkok street stalls · 🏺 Tradicional · Street and shophouse cooking of Bangkok, much of it shaped by Chinese-Thai families

Thailand · stir-fried rice noodles — An ownerless national dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms pad thai as a stir-fried rice noodle dish commonly served as street food in Thailand, typically made with rice noodles and shrimp. The cold-soak rule, the sour-sweet-salty sauce order, the one-portion-at-a-time rule and the pale-orange colour test are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

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Pasos

Soak the noodles in cold water for 1 hour, until bendy but still firm at the core. Drain well.
Warm the tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce together until the sugar dissolves. Taste it — it should be sour first, then sweet, then salty, in that order.
💡 Fix the sauce now, in a bowl, not later in the wok. Once it is on the noodles you cannot rebalance it without adding liquid and turning them soft.
Cook ONE portion at a time. Get the wok smoking, add 2 tbsp oil, and fry the tofu, dried shrimp and radish for 1 minute.
Add the garlic, shallot and prawns and cook 1 minute until the prawns turn pink.
Push everything to one side, break an egg into the space, let it set for 20 seconds, then scramble it roughly.
Add half the noodles and half the sauce and toss hard for 2 minutes, letting some strands catch on the wok.
💡 If the noodles look dry, add a splash of water — never more sauce. More sauce makes it sweeter and darker, and a good pad thai is pale orange, not brown.
Throw in half the sprouts and chives, toss 20 seconds, and tip onto a plate.
Repeat for the second portion. Serve with peanuts, chilli flakes, raw sprouts and a lime wedge.

💡 Consejos

Pad thai is not an old dish. It was promoted nationally in the 1930s and 40s as a rice-saving, identity-building noodle, and it worked so well that it now stands for the whole country abroad.
The lime and the raw sprouts on the side are not garnish — the dish is deliberately under-soured on the plate so the eater finishes it.