How to Make Jet Tila's Thai Basil Chicken | Ready Jet Cook | Food Network

And if you don't like spice at all, just submit to Chili's. I'm not going to judge you much, maybe just a little bit. What's up, family? Jet Tila here, and this is Ready Jet Cook, where I show you how to make the best Asian dishes from shop to table. And today, we're making Thai basil chicken. This dish is the most popular Thai street food, period. I grew up eating it, and now you'll be able to serve it up in your own home. So before we get cooking, go ahead and hit that Subscribe button to stay tuned for the latest Ready Jet Cook. Now, let's tackle this iconic dish. As the Thai culinary ambassador to America, it's my duty to spread amazing Thai dishes all over America. And this is one of my favorites, krapow chicken. So you can't have Thai basil chicken without talking about basil. The word krapow actually refers to holy basil, which is almost impossible to find in America. So I want you to use this, Thai sweet basil, also known as hualapao. You can identify it visually very simply. Purple stem, a nice flat green leaf, and it smells like black licorice or anise. And people will always ask me, Italian basil versus Thai basil. Thai basil for the win, for sure, for this dish. To be brutally honest, we've been using this kind of basil since the inception of Thai restaurants in America. So this sweet basil is the flavor you really want to go for. Trust the Thai culinary ambassador. If you're in a pinch and can't find Thai basil, I'm gonna allow Italian basil. It's better than not making this dish at all. The Italian basil is gonna have less of an anise flavor, and you're gonna probably need a little more of it to make up for the fragrance of Thai basil. So we got our basil, let's get some chilies, come on. All right, so Thai base level spice is probably an American seven or eight, sometimes even nine. So I'm trying to say we like these really spicy. The number one form of heat in Thai cooking are these chilies right here. They're called Thai chilies, also known as Thai bird chilies. They're about one to three inches long. They come in green or red. They really kind of taste the same, so it's really up to you. Thai chilies are small but mighty, so tread carefully. Also, when chopping up chilies, wash your hands or use gloves. This kind of thing, give you a pretty bad day. You control the heat level by the amount of chilies. So like two chilies is like medium spicy, one might be mild, and if you don't want any spice, you can actually leave them out. When I cook for my kids, I use no chilies. Because you're buying them in such a large quantity, whatever you don't use, throw in the freezer, and then you can pull them right out of the freezer, chop them up frozen, and throw them in your food. If you can't find these fresh chilies and you have to use a dry, and you can't get Thai dried chilies, chilies to Arbol are probably the best alternative. You'll probably have to use double the dry to the fresh for the same heat. I got a few more things to grab. I'll meet you back in the kitchen. Thai basil chicken is the ultimate go-to meal in Thailand. Everybody eats it all day long. I'm gonna show you how to make Thai basil chicken like they do on the streets, and it always starts off with a fluffy egg. I know it looks like an egregious amount of oil, but I promise you this, the egg will not absorb that much oil, and you need this oil to get that amazing fluffy egg that you get on the streets of Thailand. What I'm looking for is a little bit of white smoke, because you want this egg to start fluffing up immediately. So carefully crack an egg right into the oil, and then immediately start ladling the oil over the top. Don't freak out if it starts to sputter a little bit. That's why I'm putting it on the far side of the pan. It's like pizza crust poofing up. I think most of us Thais like a fried egg because it adds a little more protein. That soft yolk really almost adds to the lusciousness of the sauce. It also kind of cools down a very spicy grapao. So I'm going to be very good about lifting the egg out and draining as much oil as possible. And there you have it, a perfectly fried egg. The yolk still should be runny, but we're gonna find out after I put it on top of that basil and rice. We're not throwing this oil away. We're gonna use about two to three tablespoons for the actual grapao. Speaking of grapao, I gotta start prepping. So I'm gonna start with my aromatics here. And these two ingredients are really the hallmark of Thai food. It's garlic and chilies together. So in the Thai kitchen, don't overthink the chopping of chilies and garlic. I'm gonna show you how the aunties do it. Take a really wide knife, and I want you to smash that garlic. Put it to the side, smash, and then gather together and give that a rough chop. Put it to the side. Bring the chilies to the game, and you're gonna slice them nice and thin. Now, these are Thai bird chilies, which means they are really high on the hot scale. If you're like, I don't love spicy, it's okay. Back it down to like a serrano for just a little bit of heat. And if you don't like spice at all, just omit the chilies. I'm not gonna judge you much. All right, so chilies and garlic together, perfect. Now I'm gonna move on to my green beans. In the States, we can use hair couvert or blue lake beans. Both are fine. I'm gonna take the ends off. We don't want those. And sometimes you can buy them at the store already tipped. These came untipped, so I'm just gonna line up all of the stem sides, put them together, and just do one cut. So now that the beans are gathered up, I want them to be a crispy addition. I want them to be vegetal. So think about the stir fry, taking about like four to five minutes, and these should be kind of al dente still. So this is kind of, to me, the magic width of green beans. As I mentioned before, I am the Thai culinary ambassador to America, which means I wear a lot of hats. I help Thai restaurant owners navigate, you know, owning a restaurant in America. I help import relations, and I also help with Thai tourism. The downside is I have no diplomatic immunity and I can't get out of tickets. So anyway, pretty awesome role though. If you're really getting into Thai cooking and want to cook more, check out my recipe for Thai barbecue chicken. So all our prep is done, it's time to get into the pan. I've drained off most of the oil from frying that egg. I say it all the time, but it's so important to make sure this oil is white smoke hot before we start searing. Now I'm gonna start with a protein because I want to start browning that chicken off. I'm making sure to press the ground chicken into the pan to get as much cooking surface area as possible. And a lot of ground protein is going to have some moisture. So expect a little bit of sputter in the beginning, but that eventually is gonna burn off and you're gonna start browning your ground chicken. Don't rush to start breaking the ground chicken up. Let it really start to sear on every side. So it'll take about one to two minutes. So as you can see, the chicken is starting to brown on the edge. This is the point where I start breaking it up into bits and I'm gonna marry some chili and garlic in there. This dish instantly brings back memories of walking through those hundreds of food stalls and the chili and the garlic and the curry smells. So pressing down the chicken might've created a few patties here and there. So now we're gonna use the wok shovel and break those down into smaller bits. So that's about 50% cooked through. Time to start adding those beans. So unlike Chinese stir fry, where you kind of just sear everything till done, this Thai basil chicken is kind of a braise. So watch, I'm gonna make a braising liquid and it's gonna reduce and become a sauce. I'm gonna start with chicken stock. I'm actually now flavoring that sauce with a little chicken powder, some MSG. And because it's Thai food and not Chinese stir fry, I'm gonna add a little sweet soy sauce, which is a less salty version of soy sauce. Has a little bit of molasses in it. So it's a really nice balance between sweet and salt. And we've used a ton of Chinese oyster sauce together. I wanna introduce you to Thai oyster sauce now. It's less salty, has more of a rounded, sweet to savory balance. What fascinates me about this dish is most stir fries are like heat and fire and sear until it's all done. Thai street style basil is actually a reduction sauce. I'm gonna let this sauce reduce. It's gonna cook the chicken through. The fat from the chicken is emulsifying and it's actually gonna thicken the sauce. You can actually grip out anything, right? So this is grip out chicken. You could get grip out beef, grip out seafood. And my favorite, if you're a true pro, go to a restaurant and get grip out pork belly. It's gonna change your life. So I'm gonna put half of the basil now because I want it to perfume the dish. And it's already starting to thicken. So once it's reduced here by almost half, this dish is gonna finish up pretty quickly. So let's add the rest of this basil. I'm gonna add a little bit of white pepper. It's the same peppercorn as black pepper, but unroasted, it's a little more floral and light. The visual cue you're looking for is when I pull the meat to the side, that sauce is reduced to a gravy. The basil leaves are bright and shiny. It's time to eat this. Now this is the classic presentation of Thai basil chicken. A nice mound of jasmine rice. I'm gonna put a little bit of the krapao gai on the side. And then we're gonna finish with that perfectly fried egg on top. Not quite done, a little dash of white pepper. I'm basically on the streets of Thailand or basically at mom's house. Pretty nostalgic dish. And here's a tip on how Thai people eat, by the way. We don't use chopsticks for everything. We use fork and spoon. Spoon in my dominant hand, fork in my non-dominant hand. And this is how you navigate basil chicken. You break open the yolk. You tear off a piece of the egg. And now you're kind of just smashing the perfect bite. The egg and the yolk and the rice come together. You bring a perfect bite of the basil chicken that has the chicken, the chilies. And the yolk and the sauce have actually become one. It's gone from yum to super yum. And that's your perfect bite. All right, here we go. That really is the perfect bite. The warmth of the jasmine rice, the egg, that chicken, that basil, ultimate comfort food. This bite also takes me back to my childhood because this is the dish that my grandmother made, my father made, my mother made, and every person kind of had their own spin on it. But the common thread is the comfort and the love that this dish reminds me of. All right, family, I hope you got a kick out of learning how to make one of my favorite Thai street foods. And now it's your turn to make it in your home. Make sure to smash that like button and I'll see you here next time for another episode of Ready Jet Cook.