Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen so last week I showed you how to make homemade thai-style
chicken stock and today it is the perfect recipe to use that chicken stock for so I'm
making chicken noodle soup Thai style and when I say high style I mean this is the stuff that you
can find sold by street vendors all over Thailand and it's actually one of the simplest noodle soups
to make when we make noodle soup at home chances are it's this one in Thai this is called guay tiew
gai cheek guay tiew means noodle gai is chicken and cheek means to pull and yes we are going
to be pulling chicken for this and as you'll see this is sort of like very similar to fur but with
Thai flavors let's get started so what I've got in this pot is my chicken stock that I just made and
I highly encourage you to not use store-bought for this because if you do you're not going to
get that flavor that is iconic of Thai noodle soup okay to this I'm going to season it with some soy
sauce and of course some fish sauce and you know I asked soy sauce and fish sauce in combination
because even though they're both salty agents they have different flavors soy sauce a little smoother
or fish sauce a little sharper and together they really create something well balanced and a little
more complex that's balanced at salt I am going to add some sugar now just going to bring this
to a simmer while that's going let's talk about the chicken so this is just boneless skinless
chicken breast but I have cuts very strategically so what I did is first I separated the tender and
then with what you've got left you want to look at where the fiber runs okay and then you want
to make a cut that divides that fiber in half so then when you go to pull the chicken you don't
get long pieces of you know chicken fiber you get short bite-sized pieces okay and then I'm simply
going to poach this in our stock so the stock is just coming to a simmer now I'm going to add the
chicken gently don't splash yourself and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to let the chicken
post at a very still simmer now I know that sounds weird but here's what I mean basically you've got
steam coming off the top the whole time but it's not bubbling okay and that temperature is going to
cook your chicken all the way through but it's not going to overcook the outside okay and also that's
the reason why I cut the chicken in half because the smaller the piece the more evenly it's going
to cook if you throw the whole chicken breast net it's going to take a long time by the time
the inside cooks outsides overcook so this is a lot faster and the tender will only take three to
five minutes to cook so we want to pull that out first and then the rest of the pieces will pay
in my experience seven to ten minutes so I have meat thermometer it's definitely handy to have
all right so these are done and if you're using a thermometer you want it to be at 165 degrees
Fahrenheit and I'm going to let these cool for now so I can peel pull them without burning my
hands now that we have our guy I am going to cheat my guy simply by pulling it yay and because you
have cut the chicken in half then the pieces are like nice bite-sized lengths you know and you just
get your kids involved and tear out the little pieces alright so now that you've got your guy
cheek I'm going to season this a little bit with fish sauce because right now there isn't a whole
lot of flavor going on but you just need a splash and this is way more than you need for the noodle
soup but they're really handy to throw into pasta sauces and the soup into fried rice but you just
realize how useful having just bits of cooked chicken is in the fridge now in addition to the
fish sauce I'm also going to add some garlic oil now garlic oil is something you're going to need
for the noodle soup anyway I'm just putting some over the chicken because in addition to flavor is
prevented from drying out because now you've got really thin pieces of lean chicken and if you let
this sit while you're doing other things that can easily dry out and add in garlic flavor to chicken
I mean come on what can go wrong right mmm that's ready to go on your soup so let's take a look at
the other ingredients for this now those soaps the only hard part about noodle sauce if there
is a hard part is getting all the ingredients ready okay so let's talk noodles first so the
noodles I'm using for this is rice noodles small size the same kind you find in Vietnamese pho now
this comes dry like this this is the one I use it doesn't have to be this brand and all I did was I
soaked it in room-temperature water for about 15 minutes or however long it takes for it to become
pliable like this if your water is really cold it will take a little longer but you don't want to
let it go you know for hours because it can be over soaked and then you noodles will overcook
really quickly so once it's pliable you can remove it from the water yes of course you can use any
other kinds of noodles that you wish I also have some chicken balls so we have some chicken breasts
but now we need some chicken balls I buy them just like this oh I didn't make them and it's
so commonly added to Thai noodle soups if you're if you're using a pork based soup then they'll
use pork balls if you're using if you're eating fish noodle soup that's fish balls and you can
easily find this at Asian grocery stores some bean sprouts bean sprouts just add a little crunch if
you don't like it you can opt to not put it in I've got spinach any baby greens like Danny bok
choy would be good any sort of greens that you would like in your soup as long as the flavor is
quite mild I just like you spinach because it's easy to find cilantro and green onions I mean
these are optional and this guy over here this is something that we add in many types of noodle
soup this is called some chai so there are little bits of cabbage that's been preserved in salt and
so they become sort of little salty crunchy chewy bits in your noodle so think like they can get but
cabbage okay and then in terms of condiment I've got the garlic oil in the fried garlic I chop some
garlic it fried it in the oil I separate them okay it's going to add nice garlicky flavor to your
noodle soup I've got some chili flakes and some chili vinegar and chili vinegar super easy chili
vinegar garlic in the blender and all the details of how to make all this I will load in the written
recipe so I am ready to go I've got my broth my noodle broth simmering in the back and I've also
added the chicken balls in there so they can heat up with the broth I've got my pot of boiling water
here which I'm going to use to blanch my noodles and my vegetables and yes you can put everything
all at the same time if you don't have something like this you've also seen me use that like
Chinese style noodle strainer or maybe Taizo I don't know what that is but like a more cup shaped
noodle strainer or whatever you have that'll work okay going in and one two three four five that's
it up now and remember the the broth is going to be hot boiling hot when you pour it over it's
going to continue to cook the noodles a little bit more okay I'm going to switch pots real quick I'm
also going to add the chicken balls in at the same time there you go especially if you're making like
lots of different bowls and you're not ready to eat right now it's even more important that you
don't over cook the noodles because that's going to sit for a little bit right okay so now all the
condiments go in oh and before I eat if you think this is a little Plain Jane for you check out the
written recipe I show you how you can quickly and easily turn this into a thumb yum file with the
okay cheek spicy sour really good give it a good toss oh that's smell oh there's nothing like it
oh that is so good flashbacks of all that brah it's such a perfect balance of flavor that's soft
if you spend a good amount of effort on making a good sock you're halfway there I mean everything
else is just little ingredients here and there but if you pay attention to your socks it makes all
the difference it's if one of those Thai dishes is not like strong fighting hearts our you know
like some pie dishes can be but it's the epitome of comfort food I really encourage you could
give this noodle soup a try I mean it is chicken noodle soup like no other chicken noodle soup and
yet it's a lot of little ingredients that you have to put together but there are a lot of things that
you can make in advance there's a lot of things that will last a long time and when you put it
together it'll be all worth it so the recipe will be on hot Thai Kitchen calm as per usual and if
you haven't subscribed to the show please do so right here and Oh send me photos of your noodle
soups on Facebook Twitter or Instagram and I will see you next time so Iike that broth is a
little salty a little sweet with that little chewy vinegar and the chicken flavor it's so chickeny