Battle of Pad Thai

Author: Chris Perrin

The first time I had Pad Thai, sometimes spelled Phad Thai or Phat Thai, was unforgettable. This was due in no small part to the fact that I was running from my cubicle to the men's room to wash the unbelievable hotness from my mouth. However, somewhere in the throes of sheer agony I caught the flavor of something I could not name, but I instantly loved. The sauce, a mixture of sour and sweet and spice, was like nothing that I had ever tasted before in my life. I begged my coworker who was sharing his leftovers to take me to the restaurant so I could try to order the dish, though I knew I'd opt for medium heat instead of Thai nuclear.

However, I knew I had already fallen for Pad Thai, even if the price tag was a severe. A friend on mine once explained that buy one get one free at a Thai restaurant was like buy two get none free anywhere else. Still, knowing that I could not live without a steady stream of the stuff, and being overly confident in my cooking abilities, I decided I would save money and learn to cook the dish myself.

Pride comes before the fall as they say. I went to the Asian market and picked up a bottle of nam pla (fish sauce), some tamarind paste, and some rice noodles. I could hardly wait to get home and make my first pot of Pad Thai. The result was something to behold. Imagine a dish that tastes of the odor of fish sauce with enough spice that it caused burning to the throat and eyes. It was a runny mass of noodles, fish sauce, and chili flake. The dogs would not go near it. In fact, that Pad Thai was so spectacularly bad, it would be six months before I would try it again.

But try it again I did. For the second attempt, I enlisted the services of my friend Sean who came armed with his Thai cookbook. The secret, it said, was to use ketchup instead of tamarind. Anyone who says to use ketchup when making Pad Thai is Not Your Friend. The resulting dish tasted nothing like Pad Thai. The ketchup's sugar and vinegar did mellow the fish sauce flavor; however, like the fish sauce before it, the ketchup overwhelmed the other flavors. Not as bad as it sounds, but not Pad Thai.

All in all, I tried five times to make Pad Thai and each was so abysmally unsuccessful that I stopped trying all together. Napoleon has Wellington. Superman had kryptonite. I had Pad Thai. Years passed. I got married. I had a son. Then I happened to record a program that showed how to make Pad Thai. It looked so easy.

I will hand it to that cooking show. It taught me three important things. First, there are three critical flavoring agents in Pad Thai's sauce: tamarind, fish sauce and sugar. Sugar is so critical to the dish because it calms the strong flavor of the fish sauce and makes it play nice with the other ingredients. Without it, the fish sauce can overpower everything else in the skillet and you have what I made the first time I cooked Pad Thai. Secondly, that show gave me the base ratio for those three critical flavoring agents in Pad Thai which I have tweaked over time. Last, it also taught me to withhold the mixture until the very end of the stir fry process. Even better, my wife was going out of town and would not be there to witness my sixth Pad Thai failure. So, I created a recipe and hunkered down to make Pad Thai.

And it was good. The first batch was not exactly restaurant quality, but it was miles beyond anything else I had ever produced. More importantly it tasted like Pad Thai. It was salty and sour and a little sweet from the sugar with a good hint of garlic and a nice burst of heat. Most importantly, though, I was able to sit down and enjoy the spoils of my victory rather than having to feed it to the trash can. Even better, the dogs wanted some, so it was definitely a step up from what I had before.

Mild Pad Thai Recipe

Ingredients

8 Tb Fish sauce
8 Tb Tamarind sauce*
4 Tb Sugar (I prefer more, but this is a good starting place)
1 Tb Chili garlic sauce (chili heads are welcome to use more)
1 Onion, medium, cut into 2 inch strips
4 oz Thin rice noodles (I use Thai Kitchen thin rice noodles)
2 Cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb. Deveined shrimp or thin sliced chicken**
1 Egg
4 Green onions, greens only cut into 2 inch strips
Salt
Black Pepper
Cilantro
Lime, cut into quarters
Almonds, crushed
¼ lb. Bean sprouts plus more for garnish
Red pepper flake or sliced Thai chilies to taste
Peanut or Canola cooking oil

Instructions

Combine the fish sauce***, tamarind sauce, and sugar together in a bowl.
Stir the mixture until the sugar is dissolved and then set it aside.

Bring a pot of water to a gentle boil and then turn off the heat. Put the rice noodles in the pot and let them soften.
Put a wok or large Teflon skillet on the stove and turn the heat to high. Wait until you cannot hold your hand above the skillet or wok for more than three seconds. Coat the pan with two tablespoons of oil. Cook the shrimp or chicken until it is not quite done and then set it aside.
Add two more tablespoons of cooking oil and sauté the onions, bean sprouts, salt and pepper to taste until the onions are almost translucent.
Once the onions are almost cooked, add the garlic and mix it in with the onions. Make a hole in the center of the onions and crack the egg into the wok. Scramble the egg vigorously until it is cooked.
Add the chili paste.

If you like hotter foods, add chili flake or sliced Thai chilies here.
The rice noodles should be soft from their time in the water. Put the noodles in the wok a little at a time and try to break them apart as they go in. This prevents the noodles from clumping, which is a good thing. A clump is much harder to stir than loose noodles.
Now, dump half of the fish sauce mixture into the wok and begin tossing the noodles until everything is coated in the mixture. Sometimes this takes more sauce than other times, so you can more of the mixture you made, but do so slowly. Traditionally, you should not have to use much more than half the mixture.
Once the onions, egg, noodles, and sauce have been combined, add the shrimp or chicken back in and toss with the noodles until the protein is hot and you are satisfied that it has been cooked thoroughly. Stir in the green onion greens for about fifteen seconds so that they are warm and take a little of the sauce.
Last, garnish with a few more bean sprouts, a few springs of cilantro, lime wedges, a sprinkle of red pepper flake, and a handful of crushed almonds. Most recipes call for peanuts, but I prefer the sweet taste of a good Spanish almond in this dish.

* I use Stonewall Kitchen tamarind sauce which has some chilies and ginger in it. If you have juice, start with 6 tablespoons.

** If you choose to go with chicken, freeze it for about 20 minutes before you are going to cook. Then take a sharp knife and cut the still frozen chicken into ¼ inch strips for the stir fry.

*** A warning about fish sauce: it smells like a bad science project. That is okay, the worse the smell, the better the taste.

Discover more recipes

author bio