Pad Thai Blogging
Following Pandagon and Majikthise, I post my recipe for pad thai.
After three years of making really, really bad pad thai, I've finally settled on a protocol that doesn't completely suck.
Prep rice noodles:
Soak 1 package rice noodles (enough for 4 people) in very hot water beforehand. Extra thin noodles should be soaked for 30 minutes, wide noodles will need an hour. In the winter my tap water isn't hot enough, so I microwave for a couple of minutes to warm it up.
Prep green onions:
While the noodles are soaking, prep all the other ingredients. Chop a bundle of green onions into inch-long pieces — put the green stalks and the oniony base in separate small bowls.
Prep lime wedges:
Cut a 1/8 to a 1/4 of a lime for each serving and set aside.
Prep peanuts:
Grind a handful of peanuts with a mortar and pestle/bowl and spoon. You can fry the the peanuts for a short time on medium heat to bring out more of their flavor. Fried peanuts, in particular, will salvage just about any botched pad thai.
Prep meat:
Chop the meat into bite-size pieces and cook thoroughly. I used to use shrimp but seem to be incapable of not overcooking it, so I've switched to beef, which is a little more forgiving. I sometimes add dried red chili peppers to the meat while it is cooking, but this doesn't seem to make much difference. Drain the meat and set aside.
Prep egg:
Break one egg into a small bowl and beat with a fork until it is mixed and set aside. You'll want to do this now and have it ready later.
Prep sauce:
I use Thai Kitchen's pad thai sauce as a base (this contains tomatoes, which is heresy, but using it is much more predictable than trying to find authentic ingredients), maybe two to three table spoons per serving. Add double that amount each of fish sauce and rice vinegar, and a teaspoon of chili oil. Stir well and set aside.
Now for the cooking. Pad thai has to be cooked very rapidly and at high temperatures, so it is important that you have all your bowls of ingredients accessible. I have also found it much easier to cook a single serving of pad thai at a time. People with better kitchen skills than I should be able to do more.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil into a wok (it really has to be a wok — anything else and you won't be able to manipulate the noodles rapidly enough without spilling) and heat to medium high heat. After the oil is hot, add the green onion bases and allow to cook for about a minute, stirring. Grab one servings worth of soaking rice noodles and put them in the wok. Using two forks, tease at the noodles and turn them until they are completely coated in oil (if they aren't coated, they'll stick together later on).
While still teasing the noodles, turn the heat up to high (very high) and wait about 30 seconds. Stir the bowl with sauce one last time and pour in one serving's worth. Continue teasing the noodles until the liquid disappears. This should take less than 30 seconds — any more and you don't have the heat high enough. Stir in one serving's worth of the meat. Reduce heat to medium. Add one serving's worth of the egg to the edge of wok and scramble with a fork. When egg is almost done, toss with the pad thai and plate immediately. When the temperature is very high, there is little room for error — you need to be very fast.
Garnish with the peanuts, the stalks of the green onions and by squeezing the lime slices on the noodles.
Now cook the next serving.
Some notes:
- As Lindsay Beyerstein notes, the fish sauce is NOT negotiable. The more you use the better — it will reduce in intensity as it cooks. My friend Jonah uses tamarind paste and apricot jelly instead of a store-bought sauce, but I'm too lazy to find these ingredients most of the time.
- You really need a wok to do this right. A thin-walled wok and a gas stove are probably ideal, but I do this with a thick wok on an electric range and it works alright. You want to have extremely high heat when adding the sauce and much lower heat when adding the egg. The easiest way to botch pad thai is burning the egg in the last step.
- You'll get better with practice.