A favorite Thai stir fry noodle dish at home: Pad Thai Recipe

When I think of Thai food, I think of Pad Thai. Ever since discovering Joy’s Thai Food online 2 years ago, I’ve been making an adapted version of her recipe which I think has to be as good or almost as good as the local Thai restaurant we frequent. For 15 years I have had a love hate relationship with this popular Thai noodle dish. I loved eating it but hated preparing it. You see, I have this weird habit of trying to re-create dishes I love eating out at home. Most recipes I found used ketchup. So each attempt at making Pad Thai always resulted in ketchup tasting noodles. I even tried using boxed Pad Thai kits with not so good results. I wanted to be able to prepare Pad Thai as good as the local Thai restaurant down the street. This would be the only way I would ever be satisfied with preparing this dish at home. I am happy to report I’ve done it. It’s not quite as special as the Pad Thai at our favorite Thai restaurant but it’s as good or even better than most Thai places we’ve eaten at. This my friend, is a personal culinary achievement! And to think, I remember back in the day when I thought ketchup was the key ingredient in making Pad Thai. I’ve come a long way baby.

This recipe calls for tamarind concentrate and palm sugarwhich can be found at Asian grocers or online. If you have a Ranch 99 Market near you, they carry both. The best and easiest way I have found to make pad thai is to make the sauce in advance and use what you need for your stir fry noodles. The rest of the sauce you can refrigerate up to a month. If you do refrigerate the sauce and find it hardened, just microwave it for 30 seconds and it will warm nicely into a usable sauce. This recipe will yield about 1.5 cups of sauce and only uses approximately 3-4 tablespoons per serving. Also when making Pad Thai, it is highly recommended to make only 1-2 servings at a time so that your pan/wok is not overcrowded. Otherwise you will have mushy noodles that never fry very well.  At first, you may think your noodles have too much sauce, but keep frying and tossing the noodles and the sauce will reduce and your noodles will soak some up as well. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment. Enjoy!

Pad Thai Recipe
Serves 1-2 ppl.

Pad Thai sauce ingredients:
4 cloves of minced garlic
½ cup of palm sugar
1 ½ tbl. white sugar
1/3 cup of fish sauce
½ cup of tamarind juice concentrate

Pad Thai noodle stir fry ingredients:
Dried rice stick noodles – ¼ of the package
1 egg
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
6 tbl. of vegetable oil
¼ cup of red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup of mung bean sprouts
1 cup of carrots, match sticks
¼ cup of green onion cut diagonal in ½ inch segments
¼ cup of cilantro
1 ½ cups of either thinly sliced chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, or tofu
¼ cup of toasted peanuts chopped.
Lime wedge

Directions:
To make pad thai sauce, heat a small pan on medium low and add fish sauce, palm and white sugar, tamarind concentrate, and garlic. Cook sauce until palm sugar has completely dissolve. At this point, you will want to taste the sauce and tweek the sweetness or hotness (be careful, the sauce will be hot). To make it more spicy add a little Thai chili powder. Remove from heat and allow to cool 10 minutes before storing it in a jar or plastic container.

To Stir fry the noodles,
Boil noodles for 4-5 minutes and drain immediately rinsing with cold water for a few seconds. Noodles should be slightly firmer than Al dente. But don’t worry, they will continue to soften and cook later when stir frying. Using kitchen shears, cut the noodle clump in half. This will make it easier to fry and eat.

Heat 3 tbls. oil in a wok or frying pan on high and cook raw chicken, pork, beef, tofu or shrimp for 3-4 minutes. Remove meat/tofu/seafood into a small bowl. Next, heat up 3 tbls. of oil and then add garlic and red onions to the hot pan and stir fry for 1 minute stirring the garlic mixture so it will not burn. Add noodles and stir for 1 minute. Add 3-4 tbls. Of Pad Thai sauce continually stirring noodle mixture until well coated with sauce. Add cooked meat/tofu/seafood back and fry for 2-3 minutes. Move the noodle and meat mixture to one side of the pan and crack an egg on the other side. Scramble the egg with a wooden spoon and cook for 30 seconds. Add carrots, green onions, and sprouts and cook for one more minute frying everything together. Test the firmness of the noodle. If the noodle is too firm, fry for an additional minute. If your noodles need more flavor, add another tbl. of sauce and fry another half minute.  Remove from heat and serve. Garnish with remaining raw carrot match sticks, spouts, cilantro, toasted peanuts, and a wedge of lime. Enjoy!

Tagged as: Gluten-Free, Noodles, Thai