Making Perfect Pad Thai at Home

If you've ever tried to make pad thai at home and been disappointed in the results, this video is for you. Today I'll show you how to prevent your rice noodles from turning into a gloopy, gelatinous brick like this. I'll explain why a wok might not be the best cooking utensil for pad thai, and we'll have a detailed breakdown of every essential ingredient you'll need to make a true Thailand style pad thai at home. Now, this is a relatively easy dish to prepare correctly, but there are lots of little things you'll need to do to make a proper pad thai. And the first is the sauce. The distinctive flavor of pad thai mostly comes from the sauce. A good one should be a harmonious blend of sweet, sour, salty, and savory. Classic pad thai sauce consists of three ingredients. Sweet palm sugar, sour tamarind fruit, and salty and savory fish sauce. So let's break down each ingredient. Fish sauce is the most important ingredient in Thai cuisine. It's made from salting anchovies and leaving them to ferment for several months. The resulting liquid is very salty, but it's also extremely high in glutamates, the naturally occurring flavor molecules that make food taste savory. And the first time you smell fish sauce, you'll probably think, wow, I can't believe they haven't made an air freshener out of this yet. But despite its pungent smell, which mostly dissipates with cooking, it's the main way to introduce salt into a dish in Thai cuisine. When I'm making Thai food, I always try to use a fish sauce made in Thailand. The two most popular brands I've seen used at Thai restaurants are Squid Brand and Taparos. These are both very inexpensive and you should be able to find them at most Asian grocery stores. For the sour element, Thai cooks use the pulp of a fruit called tamarind. This can be quite confusing for Western cooks who have never encountered it because you'll find tamarind in several different forms. You have the whole fruit pod, the bottled or jarred concentrate, and the pulp that's been removed from the pods in pressed into blocks. So let's address them in order. I would stay away from the whole fruit because it's a nightmare to deal with and the flavor can vary wildly from super sweet to inedibly sour. My second choice would be the bottled concentrate. These are often thinned out with water so their flavor tends to be much more consistent than the whole fruit. But you want to make sure you stay away from Indian brands of tamarind concentrate. These are often not diluted and their intense acidity can easily overwhelm other flavors. Instead, look for Thai or Asian brands and these will give you the proper level of sourness found in Thai cuisine. And finally, you'll also find the pulp of the tamarind fruit in blocks like these labeled as seedless tamarind or wet tamarind and even though they require some preparation, these have the most consistency in terms of quality and the best depth of flavor. To prepare it, you'll take one of the blocks, which usually come in 14 or 16 ounce sections, and pour an equivalent amount of boiling water over it. So here I've got a 16 ounce block and I'm pouring 2 cups of water over it. Let the block soak for about 20-30 minutes and then break it up with your hand. You'll feel some thick fibrous material in the pulp so we'll need to run the paste through a mesh strainer to remove it. Once you've broken up the pulp, set up a strainer in another bowl and pass the paste through it with your hand or some sort of kitchen implement, making sure to scrape the bottom of the strainer to get every last bit. This one part tamarind pulp to one part water ratio makes an extremely thick paste without any of the dilution found in pre-made concentrates. And you can store the homemade tamarind paste in a covered container in the fridge for about a month or you can freeze it in smaller sections for about 6 months. Next, to balance everything out in the sauce, Thai cooks use a special type of natural, unrefined sugar called palm sugar. This is made from the collected sap of palm trees, which is boiled until it thickens and solidifies into crystallized blocks like these. Because palm sugar is less refined than white or brown sugar, its flavor is much more mild. To me, it tastes and smells of toffee, like sugar with butter. You'll most often find it in pucks like these or sometimes in bottles like this. And because it's a dried and crystallized sap, it can sometimes be difficult to work with. So if you find your palm sugar has hardened to the point you can't break it up, just toss it in the microwave for a few seconds and that generally softens it and makes it much easier to work with. To make the Pad Thai sauce, let's start by shaving off 4 tablespoons of palm sugar with a knife. Then add the sugar to a small pot with 4 tablespoons of water. Turn the heat on medium and continue whisking until all the sugar is completely dissolved in the water. What we're doing here is making a palm sugar simple syrup. Because the sweet element acts as a balancing agent and also amplifies all the other flavors, I find a simple syrup is a much better way to disperse sweetness throughout the sauce. When you're done, transfer the syrup to a small bowl and add 1 tablespoon of tamarind paste and 2 tablespoons of fish sauce. And please note, if you're using tamarind concentrate from a bottle, you may want to double or triple the amount because it's diluted. Then whisk everything together and give it a taste. Adjust the flavor with more palm sugar, tamarind, or fish sauce until it tastes good to you. And transfer it to a covered container. And because this is somewhat labor intensive to make, I'd advise you to make a big batch and just store it in the fridge. It'll keep for about a month there. Now, if you watch a lot of YouTube videos, you'll notice most cooks default to using a wok when making pad thai. But during the exhaustive research for this video, I noticed something peculiar. In a lot of the street food videos from Thailand, I saw that many Thai cooks were using a flat surface to cook their noodles. My curiosity was further piqued while reading the She Simmers blog by Leela Punyaranabattu in what I believe is the most comprehensive series of articles ever written on pad thai. In the first post, she describes why a flat-bottomed pan with a larger surface area is superior to a wok for cooking pad thai. She states that this type of cooking vessel allows for better evaporation of the sauce without it pooling at the bottom. This will help our noodles absorb the sauce evenly, allowing them to fully cook through while still retaining some of their characteristic chewiness. And while Leela recommends a cast iron pan, I ran into some problems when I tried this at home. The pad thai sauce is so acidic from the tamarind that it stripped the seasoning from my pan. So my recommendation is to use a wide-bottomed stainless steel frying pan like this 12-inch version from today's video sponsor, Made In. Because stainless steel is non-reactive and resistant to corrosion, there's no reason to worry about extremely acidic ingredients like tamarind or lime juice stripping any seasoning in your pan. And Made In's premium 5-ply stainless steel material is what sets it apart from other cookware. The five layers allow for superior heat retention, even heating, and ease of control. Made In's 5-ply stainless steel is the perfect combination of all the best qualities of different metals. The conductivity of aluminum, the heat retention of cast iron, and the strength and durability of Italian forged steel. Made In's stainless clad pans are crafted in Italy and used by professional chefs in the world's best kitchens. And because of their even heating, you won't have to worry about food getting stuck on hot spots. And that makes cleaning the pans a breeze. I've been using Made In for a couple of months and they are the best cookware I've ever used, bar none. You can check out the entire stainless collection and Made In's other cookware by using the link in my description to save on your order. Now the part of Pad Thai most people struggle with is the noodles. Because rice noodles have a high starch content, when you boil them or try to rehydrate them with boiling or hot water, you end up releasing a lot of that starch from the noodles. This starch will then gelatinize and act as a sort of glue that causes the noodles to become gloopy and clumped together. The trick to getting noodles that stay separate, but that are still cooked all the way through while maintaining some of that sought after chewiness, is to rehydrate the noodles slowly in room temperature water and then finish cooking them in the sauce. But before we get to that, what kind of noodles should you buy for Pad Thai? You'll see many different names in most Asian or Western grocery stores. Rice noodles, rice sticks, bun pho. These are all variations of the same thin, flat rice noodle that is used in Pad Thai. And you'll also see several different sizes, small, medium, large, extra large. The medium size, which is usually about 3mm wide, is the most common size used for Pad Thai. To hydrate the noodles, we'll start by covering them with room temperature water. According to my tests across several different brands, the average amount of time I needed to soak the rice noodles to get the proper level of hydration was about 90 minutes. And once they're fully hydrated, they should be pliable enough to wrap around your finger and they'll be slightly more translucent than when they're in their raw state. And after you've drained the noodles, you'll want to snip them in half just to piss off the pasta police and because rice noodles are inedibly long. You can store the prepared noodles in a covered container in the fridge for about 3-5 days. To cook the Pad Thai, you want to make sure you have everything assembled beforehand. Because this is a stir-fried dish, it only takes a few minutes to come together. We'll go over everything you need while we're cooking, but before we get to that, I need to tell you about a few specialty ingredients you may not be familiar with. The first is preserved daikon radish. This is an import from Chinese cooking that is used in many Thai dishes. You won't find this ingredient in many Western takeout versions of Pad Thai, but it's always included if you have Pad Thai in Thailand. It's added as much for its taste as it is for a bit of crunchy texture and it kind of smells like a wet sneaker. It could probably be a member of George Clinton's band because it definitely brings the funk. But its taste is sweet and savory and it adds a lot to this dish. You'll typically find two different types in Thai cuisine, salted preserved radish and sweet preserved radish. For Pad Thai, you'll want to grab the sweet one. And you'll likely see two different styles of sweet preserved radish. The finely minced version you can use straight out of the bag or the little strips that you'll need to chop before using. If you're not able to track these down, you'll also find both the Japanese and Korean versions of pickled radish known as takuan or danmuji, respectively. These are much more common than their Thai cousin, but they come whole so you'll need to chop them up first. And while they're not exactly the same, they are largely interchangeable and you can substitute them if you're not able to track down the Thai sweet radish. Next up are dried shrimp. These are a holdover from the days before refrigeration when fish and shrimp would be salted and left out in the sun to dehydrate and preserve them. Their taste is almost like a shrimp jerky, that's the best way I can describe it. They're chewy, salty, and they give dishes an oceanic umami flavor. Once again, these are an ingredient you won't often find in Western style takeout Pad Thai, but they're almost always used in Thailand. They're a very important flavor in traditional Pad Thai, so I highly recommend trying to track them down. You'll find several different varieties and sizes of dried shrimp, typically in the refrigerated section of most Asian grocery stores. The medium size is most commonly used for Pad Thai. And one of the great things about dried shrimp is they're also used in Mexican cuisine. So if you're not able to find them in your grocery store, check the international aisle or the spice aisle and you'll often find them in bags like these. Most recipes call for you to simply toss them into the dish when cooking, but one of the problems with dried shrimp is that they're sometimes almost inedibly chewy. So one of the tricks I learned from Andy Ricker's book, Pok Pok Noodles, is to rehydrate the dried shrimp in hot water for about 10 minutes. Then drain and dry them off with a paper towel and toss them in a dry pan over medium heat for another 5-10 minutes to cook the shrimp until they're completely dry and crispy. This method of rehydrating the shrimp and then drying them out again is known as dry frying and it improves the texture immensely. And you can store the dry fried shrimp in a covered container for about a week. Now in most Western takeout versions of Pad Thai, they use chicken for the protein. But in Thai style Pad Thai, chicken is uncommon and they instead use a special type of tofu. You'll see tons of different types in the refrigerated section at most Asian grocery stores, but what you want to look for is called pressed tofu. This is tofu that has been squeezed to remove all the excess moisture. And please note, extra firm tofu and pressed tofu are not the same thing. It's several degrees firmer than even extra firm or super firm tofu. This may be difficult to find for some of you, but I've found that about half of Asian grocery stores carry some variation of pressed tofu. If you're unable to locate any, look for fried tofu, baked tofu, or extra or super firm tofu, and grab the firmest one you can find. My buddy who's a chef from Thailand tells me one of the biggest mistakes with tofu is that people tend to cut them way too big. They're not supposed to look like a main ingredient. They should instead be cut like small matchsticks about half an inch long and a quarter inch thick, like this. And the final specialty ingredient we'll need to track down is Chinese garlic chives. These are similar to green onions, but their taste is much more subtle. They're kind of like a mild blend of onion and garlic. It's a very unique flavor that's difficult to describe. They'll have flat leaves that look like large blades of grass, and these are the traditional aromatic used to finish Pad Thai along with bean sprouts. Garlic chives should be available at pretty much any Asian grocery store, but if you can't find them, feel free to substitute green onion instead. So to make the Pad Thai, let's start by heating some neutral oil in a large pan over medium heat. When you're up to temp, add two eggs and lightly scramble them. And I know a lot of Pad Thai recipes call for adding the eggs during the last step like this where they emulsify into the sauce. This is the traditional method, but I like to have actual bites of eggs in mine, so I think preparing the eggs first and setting them to the side yields a superior dish. So scramble the eggs and set them aside in a bowl. Clean out the pan and return it to medium heat. Add some neutral oil and when it's hot, toss in six large shrimp that have been peeled and deveined. Cook the shrimp just until they're done and toss them in the bowl with the eggs. Put your pan back on medium heat, add some neutral oil and toss in one finely sliced shallot and two roughly chopped garlic cloves. And I know garlic is controversial with Pad Thai purists. A lot of people say you should never add garlic, but I like it and I'm deathly afraid of vampires, so I always include it. Then saute the shallot and the optional garlic just until they're starting to caramelize and toss in two tablespoons of the sweet preserved radish, one tablespoon of roughly chopped dried shrimp, and about half a cup of the pressed tofu and saute for just a minute until all the ingredients are heated through. Then add eight and a half ounces of the pre-soaked rice noodles. This is from four ounces of dry noodles, and the Pad Thai sauce and stir everything together. Now this is where a lot of people run into trouble because they keep their heat too high at this step. What you want to do is lower the heat slightly to maybe a little bit closer to medium low and we're going to finish cooking the noodles in the sauce. If you keep the heat too high, the sauce will evaporate before it's had a chance to absorb into the noodles. So stir everything together, allowing the noodles to gently simmer in the sauce. This should only take a couple of minutes. You'll know the noodles are done when they've absorbed all the sauce and they've lost their firmness. They should be slightly softer than al dente pasta, and you don't want to go much beyond this point. Just as you notice the sauce has completely evaporated, toss in the eggs and shrimp, two tablespoons of roughly chopped peanuts, one cup of bean sprouts for a fresh crunch, and the green part of four garlic chives that have been chopped into one inch pieces. Gently toss everything together until the chives have slightly wilted and kill the heat. Transfer the Pad Thai to a plate and garnish with slices of lime, more bean sprouts, some roughly chopped peanuts, Thai chili flakes, and the bottom ends of some garlic chives. These accoutrements are a very important part of Thai cuisine that will allow each diner to customize their plate. And this is a traditional Pad Thai that is essentially the exact kind you'd find at the best street food stalls in Thailand. Now very quickly before our taste test, I want to show you how to make roasted Thai chili flakes because they're really good and they're very simple to make. So what you want to look for are bags of chilies like these. Just the small dried red chilies you'll often find in dishes like General Tso's. Sometimes they're labeled as bird's eye chilies or in some Hispanic grocery stores, puya chilies. There are all different kinds. All you'll do is put the chilies in a large pan over medium low heat and stir them around until they start to take on a darker shade. This typically takes about 10 to 20 minutes. Then remove them from the pan, leaving the seeds behind because they tend to get bitter. Allow the chilies to cool off somewhat and then pulse them in a food processor or a spice grinder until you've achieved the texture you like. I like them a bit more flaky than powdery, but you'll see Thai chili flakes in both flake and powder form. Conversely, if you don't want to go through all this rigmarole, you can find Thai chili flakes and Thai chili powder like these in almost all Asian grocery stores. Alright, back to the taste test. If all you've ever had is the American takeout version of Pad Thai, trust me, you owe it to yourself to make the real thing at least once. This is one of the great noodle dishes of the world. And if you enjoyed this video, make sure to check out this one too. Thanks for watching. See you next time.