The hallmark of our cooking class is that when you attend one of our small morning classes in Bangkok (with usually no more than 6 people), you will have an opportunity to request dishes you love. After you book your class, we’ll email you with a few options to help narrow down the style of Thai cooking you would most prefer. Then we meet you in Bangkok, take you to the local market for a fun wander around, and finally back to our home to teach you the dishes you’ve requested.
We do often have guests who may be new to Thai food, or need some inspiration to help you decide what to request. Although we’re happy to pick for you (just let us know what allergies you have and your preferred spice level), we though we’d share photos from recent classes where guests have been really please with both the taste and presentation of our Thai dishes. So here’s a few dishes for you to feast your eyes on from our classes, enjoy and we hope to be cooking them with more of you in 2018!
Pineapple Curry Fried Rice with Seafood
A few months back we published a spicy red curry with pineapple recipe, after making it as a special request for guests! If you enjoy red curry, you’ll love the fried rice version which isn’t too difficult to make. Our version of red curry fried rice gains sourness and punchiness from the fresh pineapple, but in our cooking class in Bangkok, you will serve it in the pineapple you’ve carved out yourself. We can’t think of a better serving bowl to represent this tropical, full flavored, and hearty fried rice!
2. Egg Wrapped Pad Thai Noodle with Homemade Tamarind Sauce
In the West, Thailand’s most famous dish is undoubtedly stir fried pad thai noodles. While it’s a starter Thai dish to many, often guests have more fun cooking a cuisine when they have a familiar dish like pad thai on the menu. So to keep this interesting for everyone, you’ll notice that in the Courageous Kitchen classes we put a local spin on the version of pad thai we make. While we can make the more typical presentation, where your egg is fried in the noodles, we love to teach guests to enshrine their pad thai in a fresh egg wrapper. This isn’t only super tasty, it’s more eye catching too! When you serve it, we’re sure your friends and family will wonder what deliciousness hides in this well garnished egg package.
3. Stir Fried and Drunken Pad Kee Mow Noodles
This dish isn’t for everyone, but has been popular with visiting spice lovers. While many people complain the food in Thailand is too spicy, there are still folks arriving who want all the chili filled food they can handle during their stay in Thailand. So if you’re a chili enthusiast, or love someone who is— then you’ve got to make them a smoking hot plate of pad kee mow. While the name of the dish sounds foreign, you may literally translate it as “a drunk’s noodles”, or more commonly, “drunken noodles.” Why is this dish well loved by Thailand’s hedonists? Because the mix of hot chilis with numbing spice from the handfuls of finger-root and fresh peppercorn are intense enough to bring you back to life after a big night out!
4. Shrimp Filled Tom Yum Goong Soup
While pad thai reigns in the West, in Asia Thailand’s most famous culinary export is tom yum soup. The dish has headlined in famous movies domestically and internationally, and generous portions of seafood included in the soup make it hard to overlook! So seafood lovers get those spoons ready and prepare to tilt a bowl of easy to make tom yum soup up, to get all the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, and galangal flavors from the broth. If you’re curious about how we teach this dish to students in our project, and visiting tourists, check out our recent video recipe for tom yum with chicken.
Finally, here’s a dish for your sweet-tooth that is more than capable of cooling you off after eating too much spice. To make this traditional dessert, we spend some time together first squeezing and kneading the dough together. In seperate batches we’ll add an all natural food coloring such as pandan leaf (green), pumpkin (orange), or butterfly pea (blue), to give a vibrant color to the dough. Finally, before boiling the dumplings we do the painstaking work of rolling them in to pea sized balls, which is more difficult than it looks or sounds. Making this dish is especially popular in our new evening cooking class in Bangkok. This new class is aimed at families who prefer to make recipes that their kids can get involved with too!
We hope these photos and descriptions give you an idea of what we’re up to in our cooking class in Bangkok! Our class is officially a year old and we’ve had so much fun teaching you these dishes and learning from your feedback. All of our students are provided a digital cook book after the class, so we hope you can make our most popular recipes at home. Every cooking class is unique though, so we’re also hoping to create a larger cook book to share with everyone later in the year.
Thank you for following and supporting Courageous Kitchen this past year, happy eating!
Note: Are you may know, we are a nonprofit project and not a cooking school. While we try to honor all requests made for our class, the guests who book in advance have the best chance of cooking dishes they want to make!
Pad Thai is Thailand’s most recognizable dish and one of our most popular cooking requests! Below you can find a version adapted to allow you to recreate this delicious recipe at home.
You can catch us cooking pad thai in our cooking class in Bangkok, but we mastered it by teaching youth in our charity’s cooking program. In the video you’ll see them in action, working in teams to prepare the dish after we’ve demonstrated the steps. Each week they learn a fun Thai recipe or international dish, all powered by your support and donations!
Watch our teens learn to make this classic Thai dish:
16 oz. dry or fresh rice noodles, at least ¼ inch in thickness (4 oz or 100g per person)
4 Tbsp. peanut or rice bran oil for frying (1 tbsp per person, because you’ll fry each portion separately)
8 oz. pack of extra firm tofu cubed
4 large eggs
2 shallots diced
1 bundle fresh scallions or garlic chives chopped into ½ inch pieces
2 cups bean sprouts
2 Tbsp fresh minced garlic
Time Saving Tip: Cooking for a big group and don’t want to cook each portion separately? Stir fry all your small ingredients together (shallot, tofu, etc) and then add your proteins and get them fully cooked. Set this aside and use the empty wok to cook your noodles and egg in batches. As each ingredient finishes add it to a mixing bowl where you can mix the ingredients again before serving.
Even the busiest street food stalls don’t make more than 1-2 portions of noodles per wok at a time. This is because if you rush the noodles and overload your wok, you end up with some noodles being overcooked, while others are terribly chewy. You can also swap your rice noodles for an easier type of noodle to cook in large quantities, like instant noodles. This is exactly what we do in our kid’s version of pad thai.
The first time you make an authentic version of pad thai, we recommend you give yourself some extra time for prep to organize and chop all of your ingredients.
Pad Thai Sauce Ingredients:
1 tbsp oil
½ cup diced shallots
¾ cup fresh tamarind pulp
¼ cup water (to adjust the texture of the tamarind pulp)
3-4 Tbsp. palm sugar
2 Tbsp. fish sauce
pinch of white pepper and dried chili flakes to taste
pinch of paprika for color
Optional Ingredients & Garnish
8 oz. protein of choice (most commonly shrimp or chicken)
⅓ cup small dried shrimp (1 tbsp per person)
1 limes cut into wedges (1 lime wedge to garnish each plate)
Crushed unsalted peanuts
Dried red chili flakes
Extra bean sprouts, garlic chives, and banana blossom for garnish
Here’s a list of the most classic types of garnish in traditional pad thai. All of the most authentic version will include them, but for a homemade version of pad thai, feel free to stick to the garnish you enjoy the most!
Preparation:
Fully submerge and soak dry noodles in cold water for 20 minutes. If using fresh noodles, soak for 10 minutes. Once noodles are al dente, strain and set aside. If soaked too long, noodles will become gummy to the touch. Prep additional ingredients in advance.
Pad Thai is traditionally cooked very quickly over high heat, so laying out all ready ingredients is essential for a quality dish.
Directions:
Heat large wok on high. Add 1 tbsp oil, shallots, meat, dried shrimp and 2 oz. tofu. Cook for approximately 3 minutes until browned and protein is cooked all the way through, remove meat and set aside. Add in ½ tbsp garlic, 4oz. noodles, 1 cup sauce stirring vigorously until noodles soften. You can add in a little bit of water to help soften. Throw in ½ cup bean sprouts, pinch of garlic chives, and mix thoroughly.
Push your noodles over to one side of the wok, leaving one side clear and crack 1 egg directly into opening, scramble and cook to 80% — do not fold in. Turn down heat to low. Fold noodles over and set directly on top of egg, about 30 seconds to finish cooking. Remove from heat. Plate noodles, add extra chives, peanuts, chili flakes and lime wedges on top for garnish.
Eat and enjoy! Remember your donations help us to keep sharing recipes and training more students for courageous cooking! You can also find more info to answer your most common questions about pad thai. While this can be an intermediate level dish to make at home, once you’ve mastered cooking your rice noodles, you really can make a version that rivals that of your local Thai restaurants.
Credit: Special thanks to Christy Innouvong for writing this recipe, and Dew Napattaloong for creating the recipe video.
How much pad thai should I make at once?
Pad Thai is a one plate dish and meant to be made in single portions. This recipe includes enough ingredients for four servings. However, directions are written for single batch only. Use remaining ingredients to make additional batches if desired, sauce can be kept for a month or more if sealed well and refrigerated.
Can I cook my pad thai in advance and eat it later?
Unfortunately, this isn’t the best idea because the noodles will become gummy. We recommend prepping all the pad thai ingredients and sauce in advance. This will make it easier when you begin to stir fry. After you stir fry your noodles, you should eat it immediately for the best result. If the noodles have a chance to cool, they will begin to clump together.
To save time, cook your other ingredients in advance. They can be thrown in the wok to reheat, while you cook your noodles. This will save time and be much tastier than having microwave reheated, leftover pad thai.
How different is pad thai in Thailand versus elsewhere?
We find that many versions of pad thai (including some in Thailand) are overly sweet. This is likely due to varying ways to make the pad thai sauce. The sauce should balance the sourness and sweetness, and be tangy when you eat the noodles. If your noodles are too sweet, this flavor will dominate your experience of the dish, and the medley of flavors from ingredients such as the dried shrimp and radish will be muted. We’re aware some people may prefer this, but we want to give you a Thai perspective on how pad Thai should really taste!
Is pad thai Thailand’s national dish?
No. Pad Thai is Thailand’s most well known dish. You may argue that the dish is more popular in western countries than it is in Thailand. This makes finding a tasty, authentic version difficult to find in Bangkok. We recommend hunting down a restaurant that specializes in these noodles, or you can always learn to make this recipe in our Courageous Kitchen cooking class.
Can I add meat to this recipe?
Yes, pad thai is most commonly made with chicken or shrimp. You can add 50-100 grams of meat per serving. However if you decide to add shrimp, we recommend you saute the shrimp first.
Unlike the chicken, the shrimp is easy to overcook and may begin to come apart as you vigorously stir your noodles together. Instead, we recommend you shallow fry them first in a few teaspoons of oil. When the shrimp is cooked, set aside. Then keep your now shrimp flavored oil for your batch of pad thai!
What other versions of pad thai should I try?
We love the egg wrapped version of pad thai. This is created by making a thin omelette style wrapper and adding your cooked noodles inside. This can be a lot of work when you’re hungry, but if you’ve got extra time and hands in the kitchen, it is delicious and looks beautiful as well.
In addition to egg wrapped pad thai, there is a version of pad thai cooked in Thailand’s eastern coastal provinces that diverges away from the common versions most people know. In places like Pattaya, Chonburi, Chantaburi, and Rayong you can find pad thai cooked with chunks of crab meat! These coastal regions also prefer a very oily sweet sauce, made by using the oil from the head of the shrimp. They will also use ‘sen jan’ (ผัดไทเส้นจันท์), which are thinner rice noodles than typically used in better known versions. Although thinner, the noodles hold up better for stir frying and are used in other recipes in this region as well.
