How To Make The Best Authentic Shrimp Pad Thai Recipe w/Tamarind (Wok Cooking) | Tasty Tech

Hey folks, welcome back to TastyTec, Vu here, and today we're going to be making one of my favorite dishes, Pad Thai. Back in 2006, when I went to school in Connecticut, I worked at a really cool Thai restaurant called East Moon, and they made the best Pad Thai. And every time I go to another town, another state, I look for Pad Thai that was the same as the dish that we had in Connecticut. Well, after a lot of research, I found out exactly how to make that recipe, and I'm going to share it with you today. So the secret is sourcing everything from Thailand. So I have this Thai Sriracha, and it's different than the Hui Fung food Sriracha, which is a lot spicier. This one has got that heat, but it also has a sweetness to it that really mellows out that Pad Thai. You want to do this tamarind concentrate. It's better than a paste. It is more liquidy, and it's more concentrated, so you have that nice, rich tamarind flavor that'll balance out that heat. And then this fish sauce, this is from Vietnam. It is one of the best fish sauces that you can get. All right, so with that, I also got a palm sugar puck. Some people use brown sugar. You can substitute brown sugar in if you want, but I like to do what they traditionally do in Thailand. If you heat it up in the microwave and then chop it up, you get this, and you want to break it down to make it into your sauce. So let's review. To make the Pad Thai sauce, simple ingredients. We have our Thai Sriracha. We have our concentrated tamarind juice, and we have our Vietnamese fish sauce with a Thai palm puck, and then fresh limes. So let's go ahead and make this sauce. Most Pad Thai is served on a wok over an open flame, so that's why I got this nifty travel burner that most people use at camping, but I'm going to use it today in the house to show you what traditional heat looks like. So we're going to start this. Heat up the pan first. You want the pan to be hot before you put your ingredients in. Not too long. We're thinking 30 seconds to 60 seconds. This sauce is perfect. You can look at the color, the consistency. All the palm sugar is reduced. There's no clumps. Now we're going to take this sauce, put it in a bowl to set aside for later, and then we'll add it to the noodles and our protein. Now that we did the sauce, we're going to work on the noodles, getting that ready and set aside. So I ordered this off of Amazon. You can do two noodles. You can do a dried noodle, or you can do a partially wet noodle that you can find at any Asian store. It's just called a Pad Thai noodle, but this is just rice sticks, but they're the same thing. So I'm going to use eight ounces, which is half. This is a 16 ounce bag. There's multiple ways that you can do this. This is cold water, and I put eight ounces of noodles in this for about two hours, and I let it just sit in my fridge. It's pretty hard and dry right now, but after two hours, see how soft it is? So that's the kind of consistency you want. Some people boil these noodles, but I wouldn't recommend it because you want the noodle to be a little tougher, like chewier, so that you get a better texture. If you boil it, then the noodle becomes really soggy. You don't want that. It's like overcooking your pasta noodles. All right, now that the noodles are done, you just set it aside in the fridge, and then you can come back to it. Now that we have the noodles sitting out, we're going to work on our protein. So I tend to get fermented tofu, which is a tougher tofu. This is just an extra firm tofu. The benefit of a fermented tofu is that it's not soft. It's very hard. This tofu, even though it says very firm, it's still really soft. So then I'm only going to use about half. You only need about four ounces. You can cut it exactly however you like your tofu. So now that we have our tofu, we're going to do our tofu and our shrimp. With the shrimp, I like to get my shrimp raw, and I like to get it de-veined. And then I set it aside. I'm going to fry the tofu first, and then I'll do the shrimp, and I'm going to set that aside afterwards. So you guys ready? All right. Now that we have the proteins done, we're going to do the aromatics. I got this from Amazon. It's dried shrimp, and it's a preserved radish. This is what's going to give them a nice salty flavor and a nice savory sour flavor from the radish. Heat up the pan for a little bit, and then I'm going to add my aromatics. I'm going to do garlic, shallots, and then I'm going to do my preserved radish, shrimp, and my green onion. All right. Nice and hot. It takes about 15, 30 seconds. In the garlic first. This is going to add a really nice aromatic smell to the room and to your dish. I like to cook it for 15 to 30 seconds before I add in the shrimp and the green onions and the preserved radish. All right. Now that we have the aromatics done, so the scallions, the green onions, the garlic, the preserved radish, and the shrimp, nice and toasted, you get that nice smell. We're going to separate it inside. Pour it off to the side, and now we're going to add eggs. Once the egg is looking good, we're going to add in our noodles, and then finish it off with the protein and the sauce. We're looking at around two minutes to cook the egg. Now that we have the egg, our aromatics, we want to do the noodles that we set aside for two hours. You want to take it out, let it drip, all that water drip. You can have a little bit of water. It'll just be steaming, help steam and cook the rest of your dish. Put it in. You know that sauce that we made before? Now we're going to add the rest of that to your dish. Mix it all up with your protein, your shrimp, your tofu, scallions with the green onion, and then we're going to mix all of the spices, all of the ingredients together. You want to finish cooking the noodles. We're sautéing the noodles. Turn your burner up. All the way. We're going to add a handful of crushed peanuts to the dish. And then I'm going to wait until it's almost done, and then I'm going to add the bean sprouts in. I like my bean sprouts crunchy, so I want to add it in at the very end. All right. Now that it's almost done, you want to add in your bean sprouts, about four ounces. And you're going to cook for an additional 45 to 60 seconds. Then add in the rest of your lime juice, a teaspoon of fresh smoked paprika, and then it's done. We have additional garnish. Bean sprouts, green onion, lime, and peanuts. But this is the piece de resistance. This is a ground Thai chili. It's very hot. I like it better than, say, a cayenne pepper, because it's got a little bit more flavor to it. It's not as spicy. All right. You ready to plate? There you go. And that was our Pad Thai recipe. I hope you all enjoyed watching it as much as I enjoyed making it with you. Please leave a comment below and let me know how yours turned out. If you like our content, please subscribe and give it a like. I'll see you all next week.