Thai · Main
Pad Thai
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, a sweet edge rounding the corners, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 200g dried rice noodles, soaked in warm water 30 min
- 200g shrimp or chicken
- 2 eggs
- Sauce: 3 tbsp tamarind paste, 3 tbsp fish sauce, 3 tbsp palm sugar
- Firm tofu, dried shrimp, garlic chives, bean sprouts
- Peanuts, lime, chili flakes
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueSearing: the hard crustSoaking dried goods back to life
The words inside
Firm TofuChivesThai Bird ChileSilken Tofu
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · nuts · peanuts · fish · shellfish · 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
- Cook the sauce until it tastes equally sweet, sour, salty.
- Wok in two batches: sear protein and tofu, push aside, scramble egg.
- Add noodles and sauce; toss until noodles absorb it and turn supple.
- Sprouts and chives at the last second; peanuts and lime at the table.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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