Sawaddee ka! welcome to hot thai kitchen so if you've ever made pad thai at home before
you probably realize it's not the quickest thing to make there's a lot of ingredients to prep
but today i'm going to show you how you can prepare yourself so that comes tuesday night
you can have pad thai for the family in less than 30 minutes or even 10 minutes
if you do your homework right all right let's get started so depending on how fast you want
the actual cooking to go there are different levels of preparedness but the one non-negotiable
thing that you have to have in advance is the sauce and i'm actually going to show you how to
make a sauce in bulk in a large volume so you'll have it for eight servings all right starting with
a pot so i'm going to saute our garlic and shallots in some oil and this will cut down quite
a bit of time because we're not sauteing garlic and shallots on the day lots of shallots going in
i forgot to chop the garlic so while this is going on low heat i'm gonna chop the garlic which
you should do before part of the lesson here is to make sure you're prepared before you start cooking
which is exactly what we are not doing into the pot now i'm just gonna let this cook until it's
nice and soft and translucent you can get a little bit of caramelization on the shallots if you like
and this will take about five to eight minutes because it's a lot of stuff going on here
but this is going to save you time on the day
okay so now i'm wilted and translucent well not me the shallots and i'm gonna just take this out
of the pot for now and get most things out okay i'm returning this to the stove and palm sugar
is going in first don't worry about all the brown bits that's all good caramelized flavor and i'm
going to let this dissolve and if you want you can let it caramelize a little bit for a richer flavor
and i'm just scraping the bottom of the pot as i go because there was some bits of
garlic and shallots stuck and i'm gonna keep them heat on sort of medium medium low just so it
doesn't like caramelize too quickly and catch me off guard nice so you see how my sugar is starting
to brown in certain spots it's not all melted that's okay but i'm getting some caramelization
of the sugar i don't want to push it too far and get a burnt flavor so i'm actually happy with
this i'm going to stop the cooking by turning off the heat and then goes in with tamarind
totally normal don't panic
it'll settle itself down
okay now that it's settled and i just turn it off so it's not so aggressive i'm going to turn
the heat back on to help the rest of the sugar dissolve and now go in with my fish sauce and
the reason i go in with the tamarind paste first before the fish sauce if you pat the fish sauce
first it'll just perfume the room with fish sauce evaporation a note about tamarind there is a range
i'm going to give you in the recipe you might need a cup you might need three quarters of a cup
because every tamarind every brand every batch if you make it yourself or you buy it
they vary significantly in how sour it is so what i would suggest you do is give it a taste
and if it makes you pucker three quarters of a cup is probably fine if it doesn't add a little
bit more you can always air on the side of less and add to your final dish to be safe now at this
point i'm just going to wait until all the most of the sugar is dissolved don't worry about all it'll
eventually dissolve okay so i'm pretty much there i'm going to add my shallots and garlic back in
and that's pretty much it that's our sauce the absolutely most important thing that you want to
do is you want to measure the volume of this sauce you want to get a volume so that you know how much
sauce you need per serving because depending on how much garlic or shallots you add how much
tamarind you add you're going to end up with a little bit of a different
volume right this is for eight servings so we're gonna measure and divide by eight
exactly two cups and then very important is you're gonna tape on your container quarter
of a cup of sauce per serving that's very important because you will not remember
when you go to cook it and then also add on that note add one and a half tablespoons of
water per serving and that's it that's our sauce that alone will save you a ton of time
so you've got the sauce you're now at level one of the preparedness scale to take it up to level two
you wanna have your noodles soaked in advance because in room temp the noodles take about an
hour but what you can do is let them soak take them out drain them and put them in the container
in the fridge and they'll last like that for at least three days probably four is okay i've
never gone that far but it can be something you do on the weekend then you have it for the week
if you want some emergency noodle soaking check out the blog i'll write more details on it
level three of preparedness you want to have your protein cooked in advance so today we're
doing shrimp but it can be chicken it can be tofu it can be pork whatever you want and you can just
have it cooked put it in the tupperware and you can add that to anything you don't have to add it
to pad thai this is just a generally useful sort of ready to go protein and by the way restaurants
do all of this that's why they can have your pad thai ready in less than 10 minutes now if you
really want to be level four like restaurant level preparedness you want to have all your vegetables
cut and ready to go and talk about the garlic chives and they will be fine cut
for a few days two three days they'll be totally fine bean sprouts hey they're already cut good
news you can chop your peanuts if you want you can have your tofu already cut if you want i mean this
doesn't take too long but then again it depends how fast you want the dish done at the end of the
day right just with the tofu if you do cut it in advance keep it in water it'll keep the moist and
in good condition alright so now i'm at level four let me show you how fast this goes in real time
i'm gonna start my timer just to see how fast this takes how long this takes
walks a little gunky from the shrimp one benefit
of not cooking your protein days ahead is you can have the flavor still in the pot the pan
okay first thing going in the tofu
the dry shrimp and the preserved radish sweet preserved radish which completely optional if you
don't have it don't stress over it and if you're wondering why don't i just add all the stuff into
the sauce itself there is a reason check out my blog post i'll explain all that in detail
so get all this hot
and now
the noodle goes in
our sauce goes in and don't forget the water the water goes in
which reminds me i need a little bit more water
i and a little more sauce because i was operating on one portion
but there's actually two in here no problem
one more portion of sauce
okay okay i kept thinking quarter cup quarter cup but i'm making two
let this cook until all the sauce is absorbed and this is the exact
same recipe as my peptide video nothing new here but we're doing the fast version of it
i am going to repeat myself again you don't want to cook really much more than this per batch two
portions you with this size walk you can probably get away with three but any more than that you're
going to end up with noodles just boiling in the liquid and that's how you get soggy noodles so
another reason to have everything prepped in advance so that if you have a lot of people to
feed you're not you know taking so long in the cooking part itself okay noodles are almost dry
once it's dry the egg comes in gonna push it to one side
you can add a little bit more oil to the space
break the yolk and then i'm going to move the noodle back on top
just let it sit for a bit
because you kind of want like an omelet at the bottom
okay now you get some nice browning the browning of egg that's good give that a toss
nice okay we're pretty much home stretch here i'm going to turn off the heat see 355 off the heat
now the vegetables go in we've got garlic chives bean sprouts peanuts looks like a lot but that is
mistake number one that most people make is they don't add enough bean sprouts and that's
how you get heavy gloopy pad thai this is what's gonna make it fresh and light and delicious see
and it all wilt beautiful don't forget the shrimp
and toss it in and that is it see four minutes 35 seconds and you got beautiful pad thai for two
all right oh look at that and by the way another reason it's really good to do pad thai prep is
because it doesn't keep well this is not a dish you want to save like make today and eat tomorrow
it's not good so whenever possible you want to have it fresh classic garnish even more bean
sprouts some extra garlic chives and these are all super classic way you see pad thai served
in thailand a wedge of lime missing something peanuts yeah there's already some in there but
always good to have some nice fresh one look at that you just did that in less than five minutes
plus all the prep time that you didn't do today let's give it a taste mistake number
two is people don't put lime on their it really makes a difference adds that fresh brightness
so good i should add two that none of this advanced prep stuff compromise the flavor
at all like we're not taking shortcuts or anything like this still tastes exactly
as it should a good balance of sweet salty sour again be prepared to adjust the sour depending
on your tamarind but man just right here i need some chili flakes make it a little spicy
so good so good so i hope you give this a try level one two three four pick your level
depending on how rushed you are during the week and i promise you this will pay off a special
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you as always for watching and i will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal.