Pad Thai has to be by far one of the most appealing dishes on the menu when it comes to thai food. It offers the perfect balance of filling, savory meat, crunchy nuts, delicious noodles, and a great added sweetness that complements the rest perfectly.
Pad thai is technically a kind of stir-fry made with noodles, and very often served as street food. It is thought that a similar dish was introduced during the Ayutthaya Kingdom period. At this time, noodle dishes were being promoted in a bid to try and reduce the domestic consumption of rice.
Since then, pad thai has grown in popularity to become one of Thailand’s national dishes. And with it being a great option for street food, it has also grown very popular internationally – along with other forms of street food.
But while a takeaway pad thai is a great dish, there is nothing quite like making this fantastic stir fry yourself. Read on and in this post we are going to explore 14 different recipes, each of which can be used to make a fantastic and delicious pad thai.
1 Beginner Pad Thai
When exploring any new dish, it’s always a good idea to start with a basic recipe and then to build from that. Our beginner pad thai will take less than thirty minutes to make, but will be the exact delicious flavor that you are familiar with from takeouts.
For this recipe, you will need:
14 ounces of rice noodles
A quarter cup of canola oil
One pound of shrimp (peeled)
8 ounces of tofu cut into cubes
3 eggs
2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
A quarter of a cup of fish sauce
A third cup of white sugar
Half a teaspoon of crushed red pepper
One cup of bean sprouts
Three carrots (julienned)
A quarter cup of crushed peanuts
Two green onions (chopped)
One lime cut into wedges
Cilantro (garnish)
To make the dish, you’re going to cook the rice noodles in boiling water for a minute, and then let them sit for five minutes. Once they have softened, rinse them with cold water and set them to one side. Add the canola oil to a wok on a high heat and cook the shrimp and tofu cubes.
Cook these for one to two minutes on each side, then remove them from the pan leaving the oil behind. Now add the eggs into the oil and chop them into small pieces with a spatula as you cook. Add the noodles, shrimp, and tofu back in, then add the rice vinegar, the fish sauce, the sugar, and the red pepper.
Finally, dish up and serve the bean sprouts, carrots, green onions, and lime wedges as garnishes.