Thai cuisine is known around the world for including a range of flavors in each dish. Pad Thai, the national dish of Thailand, has sweet, salty, spicy, and savory flavors thanks to a number of different ingredients. While there are Thai restaurants in most major cities, it can be more affordable and often more enjoyable to make the dishes at home. If you plan to make some traditional Thai meals in your own home, use these four tips to ensure that each dish is authentic and delicious.
1. Use Traditional Ingredients
It is the bold flavors of fresh ingredients that gives Thai food its wonderful and exotic reputation. The most common mistake that home chefs make is substituting hard to find Asian ingredients for common supplies. However, you might be surprised at how easy it is to find the right Thai ingredients if you are willing to look for them. Asian grocery stores, online stores, and even traditional grocery stores can sometimes carry fresh lemongrass, fresh ginger, curry powders and pastes, or even small jars of fish paste.
2. Find the Right Cooking Equipment
Like any meal, it takes the right equipment to make authentic Thai cuisine. Start by investing in a high quality wok for your kitchen. Choose something nonstick that will work with your stove. While traditional Thai restaurants and vendors almost always use gas ovens, electric ovens are completely appropriate in most cases. For grinding up ingredients, a small mortar and pestle is affordable and more authentic than a blender or a food processor. A collection of sharp knives will also be important for chopping and dicing the fresh vegetables, herbs, and spices.
3. Make Dishes to Order
With some baked Italian dishes or American meatloaf dishes, chefs can prepare and cook the food in advance and simply warm it up to serve. With Thai food, however, it will be fresher and more authentic if the food is made to order. Noodle dishes and stir fries should be cooked right before they are ready to be served, or the crispness of the vegetables will fade. The exception to this rule is some of the more spicy Thai soups and curries. These can often be made in advance, and the flavors will continue to improve for a day or two when properly refrigerated.
4. Adjust Foods to Your Taste
While it is very important to follow recipes carefully in order to enjoy authentic meals, there is also some leeway when it comes to adjusting the flavors. Many westerners believe that if they change the ingredients even slightly, it will no longer be authentic. However, that could not be further from the truth. Street vendors in Bangkok often ask their customers how spicy dishes should be, or how sweet. Home chefs have the opportunity to adjust the amounts of coconut milk, curry paste, peanuts, or sugar to reflect their own tastes and create a dish they truly love.
Creating Thai food at home can involve a lot of preparation. However, it will be well worth the final result to enjoy a delicious and authentic Thai feast right in your own home.
(Guest post) Diane Magruder is a hotel and resort reviewer and, while she’s in between destinations, blogs for thailandholidays.net – click here to learn more about honeymoons in Phuket.
