We do offer gluten free cooking classes! Lately, our in person class in Bangkok has had a lot of inquiries from people who want to learn how to make delicious, gluten free Thai food. As many of those guests have found, we’re ready to talk with you in detail about Thai ingredients, recipes, and food culture that make it possible to enjoy even with strict dietary restrictions.
Thinking Healthier Post Pandemic
The pandemic has made us all a little more health conscious. We’ve used the down time to reformat our classes and our cooking space. First off, we’ve converted our main cooking class to a plant based format. This means most of the ingredients we use in each cooking session are vegetarian or vegan. Also like a lot of people looking to destress over the past few years, we’ve expanded our garden space. So much so, that our guests often remark that it looks like a jungle! Our little urban jungle is full of edible plants that are local and less well known by newcomers to Thai food such as pandan, long pepper, and wild betel leaves. It isn’t a coincidence that these two things go together, as we teach we encourage others to be more mindful about what’s on our plates, where it comes from, and how it impacts our personal health, and the health of our local environments.
Gluten Free Thai Food
Going plant based helps us accommodate people interested in gluten free cooking, or who have other dietary requests and restrictions. But helping people who may struggle to find classes in Bangkok that can accommodate them also gives us an opportunity to highlight the versatility of Thai cuisine and ingredients. For example, there are many great dishes that rely on gluten free staples such as rice noodles. This means with the exception of some of the sauces included, dishes such as pad thai and pad see ew already lend themselves well to gluten free cooking!
This version of pad thai is made traditionally but is vegetarian, gluten free.
This is good news for everyone, whether they may be avoiding wheat due to a serious allergy, or a dietary preference. We would love to encourage you that, although you have to be persistent about asking about ingredients, there are still plenty of things to safely feast on and cook in Thailand. Since wheat only began making appearances in Thai dishes fairly recently, much of local, traditional Thai food may already be gluten free. Out tip? Be careful to ask about the sauces used to season food, which may contain wheat. You can always prepare a short script to explain your diet before your trip and have it translated. We’ve even seen some travelers bringing their own gluten free seasoning to restaurants!
If you’ve got a question about booking a class, please use our contact page to reach out to us. As always, thank you for your support!
The hottest time of the year has arrived in Thailand! What better way to celebrate the sweatiest time of the year, than with Thailand’s hottest foods?
This was exactly the thinking the US Embassy had when enlisting diplomats to taste test six of the spiciest Thai dishes they could find. The fun video starts with the least spicy and slowly builds up the heat with each progressive dish. The result is a quick video that helps introduce a few new Thai dishes to people around the world and wishes everyone a Happy Thai Year, which the Songkran Festival celebrates each year around this time.
Watch the video below and read on to learn more about the dishes that appear in the video. Have you tried them all? Join one of our cooking classes when you’re ready to spice things up!
Americans trying spicy Thai food as a fun way to wish everyone Happy Songkran!
6) Nam Prik Noom น้ำพริกหนุ่ม
Roasted and Pounded Thai Pepper Dip
Warm up the palate with a dish that is often served as an appetizer in Northern Thailand, nam prik noom. The chili dip is made up of medium-sized and juicy light green peppers that most closely resemble banana peppers. Keep in mind though, the flavor and spice level can vary depending on the vendor. The best versions are charcoal roasted before being pound in a mortar and pestle to make a soft, stringy dip.
Nam prik noom is often accompanied by large platters of vegetables, grilled meats like sai oua, and crispy pork cracklings for dipping.
Spicy Bonus Facts:
Nam prik noom is most often enjoyed with a variety of ingredients to dip into the paste. While most of them are raw and blanched vegetables, the most infamous is pork crackling. The curly pork rind is tough and crunchy making it easy to scoop up the dip, and the combination of textures makes it super addictive!
5) Pad Grapow ผัดกะเพราหมู
Garlic and Chili Stir Fried with Minced Pork and Holy Basil
The most famous of the dishes on this list is pad krapow. For Thais this is the repeat go to dish when you’re unsure what exactly you’re craving. If the spicy, umami combination is right it hits all those hard to reach cravings while giving you plenty of fresh chili — and fish sauce soaked chili as a condiment to increase the heat.
This tongue tormentingly spicy dish is often topped with a fried egg and even more chilies in a fish sauce relish.
SpicyBonus Facts:
If you noticed one diplomat asking about an egg, the spiciest versions are usually served with a crispy fried egg, or kai dao. Crispy on the outside and slightly runny inside, the yolk helps to tame the spice and add texture.
4) Mama Pad Kee Mow มาม่าผัดขี้เมา
DrunkenInstant Noodles Stir Fried Chili and Green Peppercorn
Among Thailand’s spiciest noodle dishes you’ll always find pad kee mow ranked near the top. The dish combines your favorite noodles, in this case instant noodles, with fiery fresh chili and green peppercorn. When flash stir fried in the wok, the smoky noodles and overpoweringly heaty flavors can really separate who can and who can’t handle the heat!
The fresh chili and young green peppercorn always rank Thailand’s drunken noodles among the spiciest noodle dishes!
SpicyBonus Facts:
The term kee mow is an adjective to refer to someone who is regularly drunk. Since this spicy dish is a favorite hangover cure, it’s not incorrect to translate it literally as, “A Drunk’s Noodles” as the fresh chili and numbing peppercorn forcefully shock you back to life.
3) Gaeng Hed แกงเห็ด
Northeastern Mushroom and Pumpkin Soup
This list is suspiciously missing papaya salad from Northeastern Thailand. However, there’s another dish more people should know about from this region called gaeng hed. This soup uses local ingredients making it hard to find outside of Thailand, but often has plenty of spice from fresh chili and funk from fermented fish paste.
The soupy curry contains lots of mushrooms, pumpkin, bamboo, and lemon basil to tame the heat, it also means chefs making it can add even more fresh chili. This is definitely a dish that you taste and think you’re eating something mild, only to have the gradual, lingering spice build up to a long lasting burn inside and outside of your mouth!
The little known soup can be both spicy and cooling at the same time!
SpicyBonus Facts:
The dark color of the broth can be attributed to the yanang leaf (tiliacora triandra) which is blended to make the base of the soup. If you can survive all the heat and the funk, you may also benefit from the healthy properties of this leaf which is known to help regulate body temperature, a much-needed benefit this time of year!
2) Gaeng Tai Bla แกงไตปลา
Spicy and Pungent Fish Intestines Curry
If the name hasn’t already scared you away, the fragrant and appearance just might. This murky curry often tops most spicy lists with its spicy and powerfully pungent nature. One sip is enough to give you a dizzying dose of seaside fish market vibes, just before the visions of hell takeover. If fish intestines aren’t funky enough, the most popular way to enjoy this painful curry is over fermented rice noodles. Don’t even bother troubling the restaurant staff because true to the nature of southern Thai food, there is no mild version of this soup!
SpicyBonus Facts:
Not familiar with why anyone would want to eat fish intestines? The process for sun drying the stomach and intestines of the fish with salt is ancient and similar to the centuries-old process of making fish sauce. While these funky and fishy flavors have been mostly omitted from western diets, they’re still a rich source of umami goodness cherished by coastal communities in Thailand.
1) Gaeng Leung or Gaeng Som แกงเหลืองมะละกอปลา
Sour Yellow Curry with Fish and Pickled Papaya
Thailand’s hottest dish, according to US Embassy staff, is another famous curry from southern Thailand called gaeng leung or gaeng som. While not as funky as the previous curry, this means the chili in the curry has the full attention of your taste buds. Meaty chunks of fish and pickled papaya can provide a brief reprieve from the heat. However, let’s be honest there’s no real escape from this heat.
Unlike the more common versions of Thai curries, this dish has no coconut milk as a creamy backdrop to soothe your tongue. Instead, the curry paste is added directly to water or seafood stock. This gives the curry a more soupy consistency but also makes it more dangerous. With a close look, you may even be able to spot some of the speckles of the ridiculous amount of pulverized chili, turmeric, and other herbs used to make the intense paste.
Gaeng leung is from Southern Thailand where it is more commonly called gaeng som, meaning sour curry. Don’t confuse it with a milder central Thai dish by the same name.
SpicyBonus Facts:
If you’ve never had the opportunity to try this dish, the closest combination of flavors would be from tom yum soup. The sour tartness of the curry comes from the addition of tamarind, pineapple, or lime, and can make the dish a pleasantly addictive way to burst into flames. While tom yum may be more well known outside of Thailand, there are few meals in Southern Thailand that aren’t accompanied by this spicy cornerstone of regional cuisine.
Good news for our cooking class students, we’re upgrading our most popular recipes with new, downloadable cards to help you prepare to cook with us. Each of the cards features fun illustrations from a local Thai artist, aimed at helping you remember exactly which ingredients you need to buy. This means shopping for your favorite Thai meals like pad see ew noodles, green curry, and tom yum soup is now even easier. You’ll be able to jump into our virtual cooking classes, hosted on zoom, knowing you’re fully prepared with all of your ingredients.
Each of the recipe cards feature illustrations to help you remember the most important ingredients to grab when shopping.
We know shopping for ingredients can be intimidating. In some stores even the aisle for soy sauce and fish sauce can seem endless and overwhelming. To complicate matters, some people may be dependent on online deliveries during the pandemic and need to make sure they’re purchasing the correct ingredients. We hope the recipe cards will make this process easier, helping you find the right ingredients for tasty renditions of your favorite Thai foods.
You can find the recipe cards in our virtual courses, like our Thai Cooking Class Starter Kit, with lots of supplementary info on ingredients. For example, a key ingredient for our Pad Thai recipe is tamarind. However, the tamarind you find in the stores comes in many formats, and we have had guests purchase sweet tamarind, instead of the sour tamarind pulp needed. The information we provide in the virtual courses (which are smartphone responsive for access on the go) and the downloadable shopping cards for the recipes should help prevent these mistakes.
Each live cooking session includes access to our virtual courses where you can download the recipe cards and find supplementary information on many of the most common ingredients. We plan to add notes on which kitchen utensils will be most helpful when making Thai cuisine.
If you don’t already have access to a virtual course, you can purchase it, or receive access when you sign up for a zoom cooking course through Airbnb. In addition to these recipes we do take other requests in our private classes. If you’re planning a large cooking session or corporate learning activity, we would be happy to help.
As these course choices become more popular we will continue to add more recipe cards to new dishes and do our best to help you navigate cooking your favorite Thai dishes.
Credit: Special thanks to graphic designer Yui for all of her hard work helping to beautifully illustrate so many of these Thai ingredients!
Here’s a quick update to everyone who has been supporting Courageous Kitchen, especially if you’ve been interested in attending one of our virtual classes. The live zoom classes we offer are booked through Airbnb and we’ve made some important changes to our prices. Most significantly, we now offer a discount on our group bookings and have a special price for kids!
In addition to helping you find a place to stay when traveling, Airbnb offers travel related activities too. Through the Airbnb Experiences program, when booking travel to Thailand, you may also see a recommendation for a Thai cooking class like ours. Well, with much of international travel on pause we’re fortunate to share that these classes are still happening virtually.
From the safety of home you can still experience a bit of Thai culture with the help of video technology and your taste buds. Our experience offers guests the chance to join on us zoom to make pad see ew noodles, green curry, or tom kha soup. However for larger private groups we offer discounts and the chance to customize the menu to your Thai favorites.
The most popular options for our cooking classes are pad thai, pad see ew, and green curry. We do one dish live, but you will get access to all of these recipes and more!
Zoom Cooking Class Perks:
Live HD Instruction with Two Cameras
Supplementary Course Materials to Help with Substitutions and Shopping for Ingredients
Discounts for Groups
Access to 10 of Thailand’s Top Recipes
Special Pricing for Kids (Kids Recipes Coming Soon)
Thai Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes Also Available
Recently Airbnb has also introduced pricing for children. This means you can get the whole family in the kitchen working on Thai food together. In the past, the per person pricing has led to a lot of confusion about how to work with families with children under 13. Hopefully, the new cheaper pricing takes some pressure off of parents and is a chance to get your young cooks enthused about diverse types of food and cultures.
Finally, don’t forget all bookings include access to one of our virtual courses. Currently, we offer either Thailand’s Top Recipes and Thailand’s Top Vegetarian Recipes to all students. Both of the courses are supplementary to our live zoom classes and leave participants with some extra recipes to try on their own. There are currently about 10 recipes featured, including favorites such as pad see ew noodles, green curry, and tom yum soup. However, we’re adding a recipe for our kid’s version of pad thai and will have other easy recipes for young chefs in the future.
Join Dwight and Panisha for live zoom classes to learn to make your favorite Thai dishes.
Thank you for your continued support. We’re fortunate to able to continue connecting with people and fundraising for those in need virtually. Airbnb has also recognized this virtual experience as an official Social Impact activity, so all proceeds from course will go back to Courageous Kitchen. We hope that’s more than enough reasons to join us in cooking class session soon!
Here’s a few scenes from a big weekend in Bangkok for the Courageous Kitchen team. For the first time, we’re popping up to serve a menu all of our own creation in a local restaurant. The menu is a testament to healthy eating, sustainability, and rustic Thai food. We couldn’t be more proud to have our student leaders participating and to share this event with you.
Our special plant based menu is being served at Err for a short time, during the Thai Vegetarian Festival.
The Courageous Kitchen leadership program gives students opportunities to grow as cooks and as well balanced young people. Although the coronavirus has limited our activities this year, this month has been busy. With the Thai vegetarian festival happening, we took our young leaders into the combonation restaurant of Bolan and Err, to serve our own plant based menu.
During the pandemic we have been taking our healthy cooking to the next level, even launching a delivery service for plant based vegan food. So were please to be able to collaborate with the rustic cooking of the team behind Bolan and Err. The invitation from Chef Bo and Dylan gives our students a unique opportunity to see behinds the scenes, in not one, but two restaurants. In addition to having a hand in making dishes from Err, which specializes in elevated Thai drinking food, our students all get their first peek at fine dining dishes from Bolan.
The Courageous Kitchen team prepping ingredients for their restaurant debut.
In addition to our menu, students were able to participate in the preparation of Bolan’s fine dining dishes as well.
The collab features two plant based set menus, one from Central Thailand and the other from Southern Thailand. Both sets feature our homemade soybean products, tempeh and tofu.
“The guests really loved your fried tempeh dish, now I want to taste!” remarked one of the waiters from Err. The dish they’re referring to is a special Phuket style fried curry paste and crispies piled on top of battered tempeh. The dish is called ‘tempeh tod kreung’ and the crunchy tempeh is a good match for the spicy and sweet paste.
Grilled eggplant salad with fried tempeh batons.
Fried tempeh buried in crispy, pulverized tofu bits or ‘tempeh tod kreung’
The most popular dish from the Central Thailand set is the red curry or ‘gaeng daeng tempeh’. While you can experience a Thai red curry at any Thai restaurant, this dish is special because of the curry paste is handmade, and the ingredients in the curry are representative of Thai biodiversity.
“When we talk about plant based food, many enthusiasts do make a point to eat locally and in season. This is similar to many of the teachings we hear from Chef Bo, whether in the restaurant or on her television show, she always uses her food to highlight the diversity of ingredients in Thai cuisine.”
In addition to the tempeh in the curry, there’s a trio of pea aubergines, winter melon and snake gourd. The latter two especially are often overlooked by restaurants, even though people at home in the provinces still grow and use these ingredients commonly in their cooking. Each of these ingredients are abundant during the rainy season, and because they all have a different texture, keep your tongue guessing with each bite of the curry.
The Central Thai menu set featured a special chili dip cooked in coconut milk and served with seasonal vegetables.
We’re relishing the experience to serve our supporters in Bangkok this weekend and learn from great chefs. We hope to take what we’ve learned into future endeavors, whether in our cooking classes or other training aspects of our leadership program. Never before has the overlap between food and health been so important, and we hope to shepherd our communities here and online towards better wellness as we grow.
Special thanks to the the Bolan and Err chefs and staff, and we look forward to collaborating on special events with them again in the future.
