How to make the tastiest Pad Thai at home | *New and improved* recipe! | The Woks of Life

Soy sauce, the fish sauce, the shrimp. I love it so much. Mm! I tell you, it is extreme, but the level of pride that you'll feel when you taste this and that your two hands made it, I tell you. Hey, everyone. Today, we're making one of my favorite recipes and arguably one of my most masterfully done recipes, pad thai. This is a classic pad thai. We make it with chicken. You could do shrimp. My dad has a shrimp pad thai recipe. I think mine's better, but his is pretty good too. And as you can see, I've got all of my ingredients laid out. I'm not gonna lie to you and say that this is easy because it does take some elbow grease, as you can see, and some extra fiddly ingredients if you wanna make a super traditional pad thai using Thai ingredients like Thai sweet soy sauce, Thai black soy sauce. So we published this recipe back in 2020, and since then, a lot of you have made it and loved it, but there are some questions, and today, I'm gonna show you how to make it in video, and we're gonna answer some of those questions. So things like, can I use tamarind concentrate instead of rehydrating tamarind pulp? You know, what size dried shrimp to use? You'll also notice in our original recipe, we used a Chinese pickled mustard stem because we actually, at the time, couldn't find a salted dried radish, which is a key ingredient to a traditional pad thai. Today, we have got it. So we're gonna make it proper. I was called out a little bit on the post for that. And also, I have opted to use palm sugar today. You know, honestly, you can use granulated sugar, you can use brown sugar, but if you have access to palm sugar, this is the traditional Thai ingredient that will give you the most authentic flavor possible. Okay, so I have prepped everything, but I'll just walk you through quickly what the steps are. So first things first are you're gonna do things like marinate your chicken. This has just been velveted with a little bit of cornstarch, thin Thai soy sauce, and water because that keeps the chicken juicy. I also prepared my mung bean sprouts, i.e. I ripped them out of the bag and put them in a colander. And I've got our garlic chives. This is a really important ingredient to a great Pad Thai. It's, you know, you don't really see scallions used. It's all about the garlic chive, and these are from my garden. I've sliced my shallots, my garlic, got my salted dried radish, chopped peanuts for topping. I've got my eggs cracked and ready to go. I have dried shrimp prepared here. What you do with this is you actually pulverize it in a food processor so you get coarse crumbs, and that really gives the dish an incredible umami shrimp flavor. If you don't like shrimp, just leave it out, or reduce it significantly. You could do like a tablespoon if you wanted just like a hint of shrimp flavor. This is Full Monty shrimp. Okay, next, tamarind concentrate. So everything about this recipe is all in the prep. So I've already made my sauce, and the last ingredient that goes into the sauce is the tamarind concentrate. So you can actually buy tamarind pulp in a big block, and then basically you cut off a block, pour boiling hot water over it, break it up, put it through a sieve, because there is tamarind fruit in it, but it can just be like extra chunks in your pad thai that we don't necessarily want. If you wanna add it in, go for it. As long as you've bought the seedless tamarind, you're good. You can also use tamarind concentrate that just comes in a jar. This is a little bit easier, but word on the street is that the tamarind pulp is really much better tasting and just has a more full body flavor. This kind of has like a tangy kind of half flavor of what you would get with the pulp. So both are good, and one is better than nothing. So it's really up to you and what you're able to find. Other important items are fish sauce. Again, not everybody is a big fan of fish sauce, but I promise you, when the noodles soak up the fish saucy flavor, and then you add in like all the sugar that we have in the sauce, it really mellows it and it's so good. So trust me when I say to use fish sauce. We also have these Healthy Boy brand Thai soy sauces, which really add a more authentic flavor and are pretty easy to find if you're already walking through a Chinese or Asian grocery store. So we like to use these for other Thai dishes like Thai fried rice and pad see ew, and all those yummy different stir fries that we've got on the blog. So we actually get quite a bit of good use out of it. But if you are hesitant to buy an extra pantry item, you could also substitute Chinese light soy sauce and Chinese dark soy sauce. And the sugar in the marinade, you can add a little bit of extra to taste, but for the average person, probably there's enough. These are sweeter. So you'll see like the sweet soy sauce is pretty viscous. It's almost like thin molasses texture. That's something to keep in mind if you are making that Chinese soy sauce swap substitution. The last thing are our noodles. These are really easy to prepare. They come dried and they look kind of transparent, but once they're cooked in hot water, just in a bowl like this, you don't have to boil a pot of water and then cook them. They're ready to use. And they turn this opaque white color. If your noodles are particularly long and you're a little bit worried about your confidence to handle them in the wok, you can just take a pair of scissors and cut them down to like half size. Like you don't want your noodles to end up like this, but if you're kind of worried about dealing with a this size noodle, you can go down to a this size noodle. Just keep in mind that regardless of what you do when you're working with a spatula at the wok, you do wanna try your best not to cut the noodles by accident with the wok spatula. Okay, so the inevitable question. Why should you make this at home? As I've said, and as you can see, it's kind of a lot of work. But when you think about restaurant pad Thai, often we find that the dominant flavor is just that it's super sweet and kind of ketchupy, depending on where you go. This isn't to say that restaurant pad Thai and Thai restaurants in general aren't treasured part of where we like to eat out. But the truth of the matter is that this pad Thai is really incredible. And we've heard so many people on the blog say that this is really true to pad Thai that they've actually enjoyed in Thailand. So I'm very proud of that. And if the mood strikes, it's a great dish to try and really rewarding at the end because you're like, oh my gosh, I made this and it tastes so, so good. That said, there's a time and place for the takeout container of pad Thai and I will not judge you either way. So let's get to the wok. So I'm just gonna add the last ingredient into our sauce, which is the tamarind concentrate. And again, this is the one from the pulp that I made from scratch. You should get about six tablespoons after you follow the steps in the recipe. Just mix this together. There are some little chunks of palm sugar, but those should break up in the wok when the sauce cooks. So I'm not worried. That is a reason why I do think brown sugar, regular brown sugar is easier to use, but it's really dependent on what you have and what you have the appetite for in terms of stocking your pantry. I'm also gonna beat my eggs. And these are gonna cook right on the side of the wok when I'm making the pad Thai. That's how they do it on the street when you get delicious street food pad Thai. You could also pre-scramble it in a separate pan if you're worried about, you know, just handling a lot of things happening in the wok. All right, now we're ready. I've got two tablespoons of oil in the wok and I have actually doubled the amount of chicken here because I'm actually planning on testing this with the tamarind concentrate and the tamarind pulp. So we're gonna make two versions today and see how they measure up. Smoking, which is what you want. I'm gonna bring it down just a little bit so I don't get splattered when I add the chicken. Turn the fan on, spread it out in one layer, and just let it sit because you want it to get some color and sear. So normally I would call for chicken breast with pad Thai because I think that's just the most popular option, but we're using chicken thighs here and you're just gonna wanna cook these for a little bit longer than you would cook chicken breast, maybe another two minutes or so, one to two minutes. And we're just par cooking it. It's gonna go back into the noodles at the end and cook for a little bit more and take it to the rest of the way to be fully cooked. I think I can stir it a little bit now. Yeah, that looks great. All right, I'm gonna call it and see if that's good. So I'm gonna transfer it to my little bowl, probably turn off the heat. I'm gonna add another two tablespoons of oil to the wok. And this just makes sure that you don't get a sticky mess when you do add the noodles. It's a bit of an insurance policy on your noodle dish. I mean, we just, you know, if you look at videos in Thailand some street vendors actually put in ladle fulls of lard which is next level, maybe one day. So first I'm going to brown the shrimp. I've got it on medium heat right now. And you want these to just turn a little bit more golden and amber colored and really infuse that oil with the delicious umami flavor of dried shrimp. Really just a minute or so. All right, now I'm gonna add my garlic. Just cook that for a few seconds. I don't want it to burn but I do want it to get that delicious garlic flavor. And then I'm gonna add my shallots cause my shrimp are starting to look a little dark and I don't want them to get too toasted. Smells so good when you add those shallots into the mix. All right, so now I'm going to go in with the salted radish. Get every last bit. You know, the salted radish does add a great texture and a little bit of that like pickled preserved flavor but you know, not mad at the Chinese Da Cai mustard stem as a substitution. Cause I think that actually has a little bit more of a pickly edge, which I personally enjoy. So now I'm gonna go in with my noodles and I am just going to add the sauce right on top of that. Get every last drop. I'm gonna crank up my heat to high. Just stir fry the noodles, combine them in that sauce. If you can handle tossing, it is a little bit easier to toss it like that just to get it, the noodles into the sauce at first. So as you can see, the sauce has been pretty well absorbed and sometimes people have said that they have a little bit too much standing liquid and the next step is to scramble the eggs off the side of the wok. So if you feel more comfortable at this stage to just have a different pan out and quickly scramble them you could do that but this is really the most efficient method. All right. And now you're gonna try to kind of push the noodles to the side and you can even use your spatula to kind of make a divot there. I'm gonna put in a tiny drizzle of oil and I'm going to add my eggs. And honestly, at this stage, just leave it. You kind of want it to be a little bit cooked before you stir it or it just kind of turns into a bit of a soup, which actually, you know, Pad Thai is a surprisingly wet noodle dish. I think people often think that it's more dry but it can be wet and the egg actually kind of helps give the sauce more body. But I am just gonna let this go for a little bit before I move it around. Yeah, and you can see, like I'm just gonna kind of get these edge pieces going. So it's getting a little bit of a scramble and you know, the noodles are gonna mix in and that's completely fine. And that's where everybody's headed at the end anyway. So totally fine. If there's noodles mixed in with the egg, like don't feel like you did it wrong. So I'm just gonna stir it in to combine now. And this looks so stinking good already, but wait, there's more. So I'm gonna put in two handfuls of bean sprouts, two cups roughly, and then I'm gonna go in with a cup of chives. I'm also gonna add my chicken back in. Where's my cloth? Here it is. Protect my little hands. And this is looking so good. And you just want the bean sprouts and the chives to just get a little bit wilted. Honestly, this is probably a personal preference more than anything. Like if you don't like bean sprouts, just leave them out. Or if you like them extra cooked, it's like let this go for a little bit longer. I personally think it's nice when they have a little bit of crunch. So I'm gonna say that that's ready. And now we're gonna plate it. All right, this is so good. Just a mountain of pad thai to enjoy at home. Is there anything better? Once again, this feeling does not get old. I mean, it's just so good. You can really smell all the flavors from the sauce and it's got that perfect sweetness, but also the umami from the fish sauce and the shrimp. Oh yeah, peanut sprinkle. A sprinkling of peanuts. I like to put them just right down the center. Gives it a little pattern, a little interest. And that's our pad thai. Let's go. Jeez, forks are not the biggest. So tamarind concentrate plus brown sugar. You know, I think brown sugar is sweeter than palm sugar. And I know I made a fuss about pad thai being too sweet, but I kind of like it better. So it's really up to you. Both are delicious. And yeah, I hope you found this video helpful. If you've ever had a question about our pad thai. Excuse me now. Why you go to the gym, ladies? So you can toss your wall. I didn't want to cut my lime because I wanted it to be juicy. A little lime squeeze. Delicious.