How NYC’s Best Pad Thai is Made | Made to Order

Hi, I'm Joel Watanabongwat. I am the chef-owner at Suit in New York City. Today, I will be making my perfect version of pad thai. The main concept of Suit, we want to focus on the Yau Vat style food. It's a combination of Chinese influence with Thai ingredients. We wanted to just open up a small noodle shop, and then after that, everything just blew up. Pad thai is one of the most popular noodles here. This thing looks really intricate, but it's actually very easy to make. To get started, I'm just gonna start with the noodles. Pad thai is all about rice noodles. When we soak it, the texture is still firm, and it tastes amazing. I'm gonna give this guy a spa day. At the restaurant, we actually soak this overnight in a cold water, like eight hours, just because this one is a dry version. You wanna make sure that it's soft, so then when you put it in the wok, it cooks properly. But if you're in a rush, you could do it quick. Just use warm water. If you can take the time, please take the time. If you do a shortcut, you might just have to compromise that quality of the texture. I actually have a batch that I did soak last night. So we have these noodles that is fully soaked, and the texture is amazing. The noodles should just bend, not snap. What makes the perfect pad thai sauce would just be these four simple ingredients here. We have our shallot fish sauce, tamarind paste, and table sugar. All of these ingredients play their own important role. You can't really miss any of this. All right, I'm just gonna bring this over to the pot, and let's get it cooking. So you wanna caramelize the shallot first. Cook it through until it turns a little brown. This usually takes about three to five minutes. It brings out the sweetness from the shallot and the aroma in it. Make sure that you stir it so it doesn't get burned. And maybe low heat could be nice too. The flavor of the tamarind is like the sourness and the tang in the sauce. So this tamarind paste is pre-made, but in Thailand, they actually use a real tamarind and squeeze that juice out of it. It's quite a labor work. If you're making at home, you should go buy a jar. It's much easier. I'm going to add in the fish sauce. So the good pad thai, you need to have fish sauce. It has to be fish sauce. You cannot use soy sauce, no. The fish sauce gives it the salty flavor. We are looking for that reduced texture, not too runny. The sugar that we add into the sauce gives it the sweetness. Palm sugar in Thailand, it's quite common. I prefer this table sugar in the pad thai sauce than the palm sugar because when I cook the sauce, it's easier to melt and then dissolve into the sauce. All of our flavor elements are in here. The sweet, the salty, and the tang. I'm just going to let it simmer for a few minutes until it gives you that like thicker, reduced texture. This is the consistency you're looking for. So it's still like liquidy, like, you know, but it's not super runny like water because the sugar gives it that syrup texture. All right, we're going to let this cool down for a little bit and it's going to get thicker. Now I'm going to focus on my eggnog. The eggnog is actually pretty much an omelet in that like net shape. It's just going to be like a design of like lace pattern. At the end, I'm going to wrap my pad thai with the eggnog. This is one way of how we elevate the common street food pad thai into like a nicer presentation. So I'm going to whisk this egg up. And what's important about this is you actually have to sift this. This just to ensure that the egg texture is absolutely smooth. And the trick to make the eggnog is this squeeze bottle. You have to use this. I like working this with low heat because the eggnog is quite intricate. It gets cooked really quickly. Sometimes you just have to do it a couple of times first before you find that right temperature. I like to do this across and then I'm going to do this way. In Thailand, they actually use the whole omelet sheet, but here we like to make it a little bit more creative. So we do it like a lace pattern. This you have to be quite gentle when you push it because it might break. You could actually like, you know, sometimes like hold it off the heat because the heat still stay with the pan and you still get that nice crust. Like this one, you just like push it. Just so now like, you know, your whole sheet is moving. It's easier to grab it and voila. So we're going to move on to making the pad thai. Let's get walking. So now we have to walk to get started on our pad thai. Pad thai means, pad means fry, stir fry in Thai. Thai is Thai. Altogether, pad thai means stir fry the Thai way. I got all my ingredients ready. We have our protein, we have shrimps. I have my shrimp ready. Peel, devein, and butterfly. The reason that we want to butterfly this open because, you know, we want it to be cooked nicely on the inside and they look better when they open up. So the chive would add the flavor to it, almost like a garlic aroma in your dish. And we also have the Thai sweet pickled radish. This one is also gives you flavor and texture. It's sweet and it has a little crunch when you bite into it, it's really nice. And next we have our bean sprouts here, the classic ingredient. When you bite into it, a little crunch with like water. I have my pad thai sauce here, it's all cooled down. And this is the texture that you're actually looking for. It's still runny, but it still has that like thicker texture. I like to put the egg in the pad thai just because like, you know, we want something to coat the wok. And of course, the main guy here, noodles. This is the noodle that I soaked from last night. They're all soft, but still like, you know, the texture is still firm and it doesn't snap. This is the perfect texture. This wok is a Chinese style wok. So in Thailand, when people fry stuff in small towns, they still use the charcoal stove to make the pad thai. So you get that charred flavor. So when we hear the charred flavor that we can get it out, it's from this wok here. With the high heat, that's how you get the charred flavor. You can use just a regular pan. I think it's fine too. It's just gonna maybe like take a little bit longer than the wok. As long as you could get the high heat, that should work just perfect. It's smoking now. So I'm gonna put in some oil. Crack in the egg. I think it looks good. Shrimp. Usually we'll put like seven in. You can lower your heat as well. So you see how quickly this go? I usually do about like 200 grams of noodles. You're looking for that char and soft, like texture of the noodles. It's kind of hard to tell by the eyes, but you can feel it with your hands. Like, you know, when you touch that. If you don't cook it properly before you put in the sauce, the sugar will lock your noodles and your noodles will stop the cooking process. I like doing a lot of tossing just because I don't want it to be burned or anything gets like overly cooked. The trick is if you have high heat, you have to control your hand. You have to be really quick. But then again, you can lower your heat a little bit if you can't like, you know, go fast with your hand. Like, you know, it works fine as well. So when I put the sauce in, I actually put it on the noodles because if you put it on the rim, the sugar can get burned and then make sure that you go through it, like, you know, evenly and smooth it out. So I'm looking for the color. Maybe I'll just gonna add in a little bit more sauce. I think it's good. I'm gonna put in some chive, bean sprouts and a bit of the radish. I just cut the heat after I put in the vegetables because those will get cooked very quickly. So let's get it on the plate. When I plate the pad thai, I want to like put all the shrimp on the top. You wanna showcase your nice ingredients and the colors. I'm gonna save a couple of shrimps to put it on the eggnog. So I have this eggnog ready. So it's very simple. I'm just gonna wrap it around. And also we're gonna put the shrimps on top just so you see more shrimp. Baby bananas, put it here. And also the petals, we're gonna put it here. This is my favorite part. I love putting lamb in the pad thai. It's very typical in Thailand that like people like to add a little bit more sugar to the pad thai and also the chili flake. And lastly is the crushed peanuts. Everyone loves peanuts. The peanuts add the crunchy texture to it and also the flavor. You know, when you bite into the soft noodles, you have the crunchiness from the peanuts and the spiciness from the chili flake. This is my perfect pad thai. So I like squeeze the lamb on it. I'm just gonna mix everything all in with this chili flake and the peanuts. This is what you're looking for, the long noodles. So good. The noodle, it's soft, but it's bouncy. It's a great texture. The sauce is well absorbed. The taste is amazing. All the flavors, sweet, tangy, peanuts, spicy, everything is like flavor bomb. This is everything pad thai is supposed to be. Pad thai is such a great dish to make it at home. As long as you get all your ingredients ready, it's just simple. It's worth the time. If you get the right ingredients, you get the right pad thai. Should I save you some?