Photo: Kuay Tiaw Pad Thai Recipe
This popular dish takes time to prepare. However, you can make the sauce in advance and keep it in the freezer or refrigerator. For an authentic dish, don't take shortcuts and don't leave out any of the ingredients-particularly the Pad Thai sauce that gives the final dish its rich, amber color and succulent taste. Select the rice stick noodles marked "M" for medium; the thinner and the wider ones are used for other noodle dishes. Salted or preserved radish is sold in cellophane packets at Asian markets and, after opening, lasts almost indefinitely in the refrigerator. Be sure to have all the ingredients within reach because you have to work fast and be at the stove throughout the cooking time. With one bite of this Pad Thai, you will discover noodle heaven.
Ingredients
- Recipe courtesy Nongkran Daks
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus extra as needed
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon dried shrimp, optional
- 1/2 cup sliced pork
- 1/2 cup whole shrimp, shelled and deveined
- 1 tablespoon (shredded) preserved radish
- 1/4 pound medium-size dried rice noodles (soaked 60 minutes in cold water and drained)
- Water
- 5 tablespoons Pad Thai sauce, recipe follows
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon ground hot chiles, or more to taste
- 2 tablespoons ground roasted peanuts
- 1/2 cup sliced garlic chives or green onion
- 2 cups bean sprouts, rinsed, plus more for garnish
- 1 wedge lime
Directions
Heat the oil in a wok. Add the garlic and stir-fry until golden brown. Add the meat and shrimp and keep stirring until the shrimp changes color. Remove the shrimp to prevent overcooking and set aside.
Add the noodles. They will stick together so stir fast and try to separate them. Add a little water, stirring a few times. Then add the Pad Thai sauce, and keep stirring until everything is thoroughly mixed. The noodles should appear soft and moist. Return the cooked shrimp to the wok.
Push the contents of the wok up around the sides to make room to fry the eggs. If the pan is very dry, add 1 more tablespoon of oil. Add the eggs and spread the noodles over the eggs to cover. When the eggs are cooked, stir the noodles until everything is well mixed-this should result in cooked bits of eggs, both whites and yolk, throughout the noodle mixture.
Add chiles, peanuts, garlic chives and bean sprouts. Mix well. Remove to a platter. Serve with raw bean spouts and a few drops of lime juice.
A viewer, who may not be a professional cook, provided this recipe. The Food Network Kitchens chefs have not tested this recipe and therefore, we cannot make representation as to the results.
Pat Thai Sauce:
- 1 cup tamarind juice
- 1 cup palm sugar plus 3 tablespoons
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup fish sauce
- 2 teaspoons salt
Mix all ingredients in a saucepan for about 60 minutes until it is well mixed and syrupy. Stir occasionally to prevent burning.
Cook's Note: If you want to double this recipe, DO NOT double the ingredi ents, for the bulk will be too much to work with. Rather, make the dish twice. If you plan to make this for company, cook noodles ahead of time and add bean sprouts and garlic chives when you heat it up. If it is an informal gathering, it is fun to let your guests cook their own noodles.
You can buy premixed tamarind concentrate or make your own tamarind juice. Buy a package of compressed tamarind pulp at any Asian market, cut off 3 tablespoons of paste and soak in 1 1/2 cups of warm water for 20 minutes. Squeeze out the pulp and discard; the remaining liquid is tamarind juice. Store any leftover juice or noodle sauce in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator or freezer.
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By akinsman
Issaquah, WA
on April 03, 2013
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Alright something went wrong and I need help. I've been dying to find the perfect pad thai recipe, I saw how high this was rated and decided to give it a go. I made the pad thai sauce and noodles perfect (although the taste of the pad thai sauce tastes like dry dog food - and the only reason I know that is when I was little I tried it and that taste stuck with me. So I cooked this in my stainless steel wok, it gives no recommendation what temperature to cook this on, I think I could've burned something. I found the dried shrimp but none was devained so I decided to go with shrimp paste, I added this into the dish with my pad thai sauce. Should I add the shrimp paste when I make the sauce itself, that way it would get totally cooked and thoroughly mixed in. Then it struck me, how will this recipe even taste good if the sauce alone tastes like dog food? I don't know, please for the next person to leave a review, if you got this to work out tell us what temperature you did it for
By kristinmenath
Reno, NV
on August 05, 2012
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Complaints:
1. Ingredients are completely omitted from the recipe: dried shrimp, preserved radish, red pepper? I just ended up making it up.
2. Instructions are poorly written and vague, obviously not written by a professional chef.
3. Good luck finding ingredients. I live in San Diego (shouldn't be too hard and had to go to 2 asian markets (the first one had NO clue what I was asking for and 2 grocery stores to find what this recipe called for (but then fails to tell you when to use the ingredients you spent half your day tracking down!.
4. Timing is WAY off, 45 minutes? Really because I had to soak the noodles for 60 minutes and simmer the sauce for 60 minutes, THEN I could start cooking. Very misleading. We ended up eating at 9PM!
All in all the flavor was decent. I would research other pad thai recipes and figure out what sounds good to you, this one is a good starting point but the recipe is poorly written, disorganized and takes a lot of time.
By bajareque becky
on July 24, 2012
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i have made this about 7 or 8 times. this is normal for me when i love something but feel it needs tweaking, either for my taste or to fit what i can get here in republic of panama. actually, only thing i could not find was palm sugar, which i substituted brown sugar, after consulting a website for substitutes. used tamarind concentrate to make the juice, they sell dried shrimps at my local market. i alternate using shrimp, chicken or pork. it does make alot, even with 2 big appetites. i freeze leftover sauce, and take it back out when i need it, back to freezer. noodles should have some "chew" to them, like al dente. it is soooooooo good! watched the throwdown show, so that is cool, too.
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