today on hot Thai Kitchen we are making pad thai sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai Kitchen
I'm so excited about today's episode because we are remaking the most popular hot Thai Kitchen
video we are revisiting pot pie now since my first Pad Thai video a few years ago I've learned quite
a lot and so today I'm ready to share with you a new and improved recipe so today I'll share
with you the basic traditional Pad Thai recipe and then next week I will share some variations
to the basic recipe that are actually quite popular in Thailand for those of you who like
to you know switch things up a little bit so first let's take a look at the most important
part of the recipe the sauce now pad thai sauce is deceptively simple there are really only three
main ingredients in it the sweet the sour and the salty 35 grams of palm sugar finely chopped
this is about three tightly-packed tablespoons a quarter cup of tamarind juice often labeled as
tamarind concentrate two tablespoons of of course fish sauce oh and don't forget three tablespoons
of water so every brand of fish sauce every brand of tamarind concentrate is going to be different
so start out with the proportions that I gave you and then you can taste and adjust later for next
time just to make it suit to your brand first I want to talk about how to work with palm sugar if
you're going to measure it just want to shave it thinly like this after you get this you just want
to run through it again horizontally and then this is the stage if you're measuring it by tablespoons
rather than by weights because we need 35 grams you want to get it here before you start packing
your tablespoons so with a palm sugar I'm going to put it in a heat proof glass to this I'm going
to add our three tablespoons of water now I used to cook my sauce stove top and then I discovered
that I don't have to I can just micro even they have one less dirty pot to deal with so just 30
seconds okay so at this point it's not going to be all dissolved but that's okay just give it a
stir and then if there's any big chunks you can just press it down with the back of your spoon
it'll dissolve eventually and to this we're going to add our tamarind any brand will do although I
have worked with one brand that turned my noodles really sticky and gummy and I don't know what it
is about that tamarind it might be some sort of a thickener that they use so that happens to you to
switch brand fish sauce this is our only salting agent in this recipe so you need a good quality
fish sauce or your dish will suffer first you want a fresh bottle not something that's been open for
six months because the flavor does deteriorate over time and also use a good brand some good
brands that I've used is three crabs squid and tip but all of those are are usable ones and if
you feel like this is a little bit too fishy for you some people do a combination of fish
sauce and salt so if you want to do one a hat one and a half tablespoon of fish sauce and then a
quarter teaspoon of salt instead you can do that as well but I like this one so then there's our
sauce and the great thing is you can make this in advance and then keep it in the fridge it'll
last you a really long time until you're ready to go so now that our sauce is done let's take
a look at the rest of our ingredients 4 ounces of dry rice noodles 8 to 10 shrimp or as many as
you'd like 1 small head of shallot thinly sliced 2 cloves garlic chopped 1 tablespoon of dried shrimp
1 piece of pressed tofu cut into small pieces half a teaspoon of chili flakes or a little s
or a lot more up to you a scant quarter cup of chopped sweet preserved daikon radish two eggs
two and a half cups bean sprouts one cup garlic chives cut into 2-inch pieces quarter cup crushed
roasted peanuts and one lime so let's take a look at our noodles pad thai noodles come in two major
form dry and fresh so this is the dry one you're familiar with this you can find this in the dry
goods aisle the fresh one is usually found in the refrigerated section it's soft and pliable usually
comes in a shrink wrap package but today I'm going to use the dry one because it's more widely
available most of you can get it if you're going to use the fresh one the process of how to work
with it is a little bit different so I'll include the instructions on how to work with those in the
written recipe on the website we want to soak this anywhere between an hour to up to overnight
just in plain cold water what you want to look for when they're done soaking is they should be white
so they'll go from sort of translucent to this white color and completely soft and pliable one
thing to keep in mind is that you can soak them for several hours but I found from my experience
that the longer you soak them the less chewy they tend to be so if you like noodles chewy just an
hour an hour and a half till they turn white and drain it and then keep it until you're ready to
use it so you can do this a day ahead of time if you'd like okay so those are our noodles so the
next thing let's talk about some of the unfamiliar ingredients so first our preserved radish now it's
this attractive epi' tizen looking thing right here in Thai we call a tight bowl and it's daikon
radish that's been salted and sugared until it's dried up and looks like this now what we're going
to do is we're going to chop it up and I just put this through a food processor but you can use
your knife and mince it sometimes it comes already chopped and what this adds it's chewy salty sweet
little chunks run throughout our noodles it's going to make it a lot more fun and flavorful now
this is important there are two types of preserved radish oh by the way in a bag like this there's a
salty guy in the suite kind you have to get the sweet kind because the salty kind is incredibly
salty and it's going to be it's going to make your dish way too salty and it should say sweet on the
back if it doesn't say sweet on the back assume it is salty okay so there's that next we've got
our dried shrimp they're pretty much like shrimp jerky that's what it is and it adds a real nice
boost of umami so what you want to do is rinse it first to get rid of sometimes they have sand
and get rid of extra saltiness too so that's been rinsed and I've drained that off and I'm going to
also chop it roughly you don't have to a lot of people don't if they're already using small dried
shrimp but I like the dry trim to really be well distributed I want that shrimp eBoost in every
bite of my Pad Thai so I'm just going to give that a rough chop there you go the next thing I want to
talk about is tofu pressed tofu this is as firm as tofu gets it's like cheese now the reason why
we like pressed tofu for this is because it won't break a crumble when you toss and stir-fry it if
sometimes it's called bean curd sometimes it comes marinated which is okay to use if you cannot find
this what you can do do is take extra firm tofu cut it into pieces like this like we're going
to use it dry it off real well and then fry them until they sort of firm up the outside starts to
have a little bit of a nice golden color and that the act of frying will dry them off and firm them
up and prevent them from breaking so either one will work finally garlic chives so garlic chives
are like flat green onions and they tastes halfway between a garlic and an onion if you
cannot find this you can also use green onions garlic scapes will probably work as well garlic
shoots or flowering chives and decent substitute okay so there's that and that's pretty much all of
our ingredients everything else is straightforward if you have any questions about other ingredients
I didn't talk about you can message me on Facebook now before we go to cook you want to organize our
miso plus and make sure we put all the things that need to go in at the same time too gather
to make it extra efficient combine the radish shallots garlic dried shrimp tofu and chili flakes
in another bowl combine the bean sprouts garlic chives and half of your crushed peanuts and now do
one final check that you've got your shrimp your noodles your sauce and the eggs and we're ready
to go cook as you can see everything is very well organized that's what you need or you're going to
be running around for stuff we're gonna cook the shrimp first in a wok or a big saute pan doesn't
matter you don't absolutely need a wok for this but it's nice get some a little bit of vegetable
oil really really hot going with our shrimp I want to cook the shrimp separately because I wanted you
to be able to control how long they cook so they don't overcook and now I'm just going to not move
them until they're halfway done and the reason for that is if I don't want them there's a good chance
they're going to Brown and develop some really nice flavor yeah see how nicely Brown that is so
so benefit is using larger shrimp you buy yourself more time before they overcook so they have a
chance to brown going to sear the top a little bit going to take that out and set it aside nice okay
next we're going to add a little bit more oil and we're using the same pan so we're getting
some extra shrimpy flavors don't be shy with oil I stuff actually absorbs quite a bit of oil in
here and if you don't have enough you might have a little bit of a lubrication issue mmm I can smell
shrimp go in with our Bowl up top saute until the garlic starts to brown the tofu will start
to develop some color what's happening is all the aromatics the dried shrimp the garlic the shallots
and the radish is infusing their flavor into the oil which is going to be the vehicle that's going
to transfer all the flavor all over the noodles you're going to go in with the noodles and then
the sauce and we add it water to the sauce precisely so that you don't have to blanch
the noodles ahead of time so the noodles can cook in the pan so this one you want to keep stirring
because the liquid is naturally going to be at the bottom so you want to keep flipping the noodle so
that it the liquid gets absorbed evenly I like to switch my weapon at this point it's easier to
use tongs with noodles now we're just at this one going to cook it until all the liquids disappears
and if my calculation is correct at that point the noodles would be perfectly cooked so notice more
or less dry now I mean it's still got a little bit to go but we're not done so we're good as long
as there's nothing cooling at the bottom we're going in with the egg scramble it a little bit
now I'm going to just swirl it then let it sit a little bit then I'm going to
put my noodles on top of the egg if you have a high BTU stove this goes a lot
faster but it'll work on anything let it set for like 10 15 seconds
yeah now you're going with all your veggies now I know this looks like a lot of these sprouts
and garlic chives but they're actually quite important it's important that you add a lot of
it because otherwise it's all noodles and it's very heavy I'm gonna turn the heat off now and
the bean sprouts to add a nice crunch to it so it'll actually help make it a more pleasant meal
so you don't feel like you're so heavy by the end of it and that's it that's son okay let's plane
it over here so this makes two very generous portions three I'm not a big eater so I can
usually do three out of it now when you plate this be careful the little bits and pieces the tofu and
small things don't like to come up with the new dough so you make sure you distribute all that
stuff well standard garnish just put some extra bean sprouts on the side plenty of bean sprouts
in here but some people really like fresh bean sprouts on the side little extra garlic chives
there and always always always a little slice of lime now in Thailand we like to cut our lime like
this because it's a really easy way to squeeze so right here what else needs to go on here oh
the shrimp of course so with this size is a 16 20 shrimp which means there's 16 to 20 shrimp to
a pound it's quite large so maybe just three is good see how it's nice and well caramelized ooh
and then finally the other half of our peanuts going on top in Thailand they like to put a
little chili extra chili flakes on the side so people can kind of drag it and as they need this
lime you want to make sure you use it it's not a garnish it really brightens everything up at
a zingy freshness to it so you can always of course taste before you squeeze but I know
that I'm going to like a lot of lime so and that is it so this is our basic traditional
pot tying next week wait for the variation so if you like to switch this up don't forget to
subscribe so if you alert it when I post the next video and for the full written recipe of this one
you can visit hot thai kitchen calm and I will see you next time for your next delicious time
you