The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Thai · Main

Pad Krapow Moo

  • Easy
  • 15 min
  • roughly 1 of 4 for cost

herb-fresh · gently hot · aromatic · umami-deep Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, a warm current of chile, finishing long and savory.

Ingredients

  • 400g ground pork (or chicken)
  • 4 garlic cloves + 4 Thai chilies, pounded
  • 1 tbsp each oyster sauce, fish sauce; 1 tsp dark soy, 1 tsp sugar
  • Big bunch holy basil (Thai basil works)
  • Fried egg per person, jasmine rice

Equipment

Wok

The skills inside

Wok techniqueSearing: the hard crust

The words inside

The WokJasmine RiceThai Basil

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · egg · fish · shellfish · molluscs · soy

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Scream-hot wok: fry the garlic-chili paste 15 seconds.
  2. Add pork, pressing into the wok to sear, not stew.
  3. Sauces in; toss 1 min. 1 min
  4. Off heat, wilt in the basil. Crown rice with it and a crispy-edged fried egg.

How it should come out

  • The pork is in separate browned crumbles with crisp edges and dark caught faces, not a uniform pale mince, and no grey liquid sits in the bottom of the wok.
  • The sauce is a glaze clinging to the meat: tilt the plate and nothing runs from under the pork.
  • Holy basil is wilted but whole-leafed and still green, no leaf blackened or dissolved into the sauce, leaves show in every spoonful rather than as scattered flecks, and its clove-pepper smell rises off the plate.
  • The fried egg has brittle brown lace at the rim that shatters under a spoon, and the yolk breaks and runs when pierced.
  • Fish and oyster salt lead, sugar is barely traceable, and the garlic tastes toasted rather than raw or acrid.

Where it goes wrong Cold pork tipped in all at once, dropping the wok below searing heat, so the meat poaches in the water it releases and the sauce joins that water into a grey-brown broth the rice drinks.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Limeade or young coconut

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Pad Krapow Moo Technique: Wok technique★ A canon film, verified Search YouTube: Pailin’s Kitchen on Pad Krapow Moo A YouTube search for Pailin’s Kitchen and this dish. No affiliation.