42 Thai recipes. Page 1 of 2. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Kai Jeow (Crispy Thai Omelette), Khao Kha Moo (Thai Braised Pork Leg Rice Bowl).
Eggs beaten with fish sauce until foamy hit oil that is almost smoking and puff instantly, forming lacy, crisp edges around a thick, fluffy middle. Thai home cooks slide it straight onto jasmine rice for a meal, and it has little in common with a gently cooked Western omelet.
Pork leg braised until it pulls apart with chopsticks is sliced over jasmine rice and spooned with a glossy soy glaze. Palm sugar caramel and dark soy sauce set the sweet-salty base, with star anise and cinnamon underneath. It is a staple of Thai night markets, Bangkok's included.
Gai pad med mamuang is Thai cashew chicken with onion and bell pepper. This version uses oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sugar, with no fish sauce or dried chilies. Cut the chicken thigh into 2-3cm pieces and the vegetables into chunky 3cm pieces before heating the pan. Mix the sauce separately so it can be added quickly after the chicken and vegetables have cooked. Use roasted cashews: this recipe adds them for only the final 30 seconds and does not include a separate roasting step. Lower the heat before adding the sauce, and stop reducing while it still coats the chicken with a glossy glaze. Add the cashews last and serve immediately to keep their crunch.
This Thai dessert starts the night before, since the glutinous rice needs at least six hours of soaking and ideally a full night. Hot from the steamer, the rice gets warm coconut milk with sugar and salt poured over and sits covered until the grains soak it up, sweet with a little saltiness. Ripe mango is sliced just before serving and laid alongside.
Black tea is steeped extra strong with cardamom, chilled, and poured over ice, then topped with milk and condensed milk so brown and white layers form in the glass. The strength is deliberate: as the ice melts, a normal brew would fade, but this one still tastes of tea at the last sip. Cardamom adds a gentle spice that rounds off the tea's tannic edge and keeps the result from tasting like just another sweet milk tea. Stir it before drinking and the creamy sweetness spreads through the whole glass.
Coconut milk and palm sugar in the marinade caramelize on the grill, giving the pork neck dark, sticky edges. The meat is sliced thin and folded three times onto each skewer, with small gaps between the pieces letting heat reach the thickest fold quickly.
The Thai name translates roughly as bland soup, and next to spicy dishes like som tam or tom yum that is exactly its job: a gentle, clear broth that gives the palate a rest. It is still seasoned, with fish sauce, and the pork meatballs carry nothing but white pepper so the meat tastes like itself. Silken tofu, napa cabbage, and glass noodles fill out the bowl.
Pad kee mao, as drunken noodles are called in Thailand, layers chili and garlic heat with a last-minute handful of basil over wide rice noodles. This version uses chicken thigh and Thai basil, which smells different from the holy basil of traditional versions. The 250 g of noodles is a dried weight (fresh noodles at the same weight give a different yield), and wide dried noodles vary enough that the package directions are the better guide for softening them. Draining the softened noodles well keeps the soy, oyster and fish sauces coating the strands instead of pooling around them. Once the noodles join the pan, a short toss is enough; longer heating breaks them apart.
Larb comes from Isan in northeastern Thailand: minced chicken dressed with lime juice and fish sauce, heaped with sliced shallot and mint. Toasted rice powder is what sets it apart, soaking up the meat juices while adding a nutty aroma and a faint crunch. It is eaten warm or at room temperature, scooped into lettuce or cabbage leaves alongside sticky rice.
Of the Thai curries, massaman leans furthest from chili heat and closest to a sweet, savory braise, a style rooted in the Muslim communities of southern Thailand. Warm spices in the paste, more cinnamon and cardamom than fresh chili, make it read like a stew next to a green or red curry. Chicken thighs and big chunks of potato cook in coconut milk until the potato edges soften and thicken the sauce, and peanuts add crunch.
Regular khao man gai tops the rice with poached chicken; this version swaps in chicken thighs seasoned with soy and fish sauce, dredged lightly in flour, and fried skin side first to a deep gold. The rice cooks with garlic and ginger, giving it more aroma than plain steamed rice to stand up to the fried chicken. Excess flour is shaken off before frying, since a heavy coat tends to slip away in the oil. Sliced chicken goes over the rice with a sauce on the side.
There is no sauce in this curry: minced pork is fried with spice paste until it breaks into dry, separate crumbles. The aroma and heat of this shortcut version differ from the original because it uses commercial Thai red curry paste in place of the southern Thai paste, which has its own mix including turmeric and pepper. The pork should end up with no liquid left at the bottom but not crisp like a snack. Finely shredded makrut lime leaves add a citrus lift against the spice.
Galangal, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves steep in coconut milk alone, with no water or stock. Coconut milk splits if it boils hard, and the pot is kept at the barest simmer with only small bubbles at the edge. The woody galangal and lemongrass can be fished out before serving.
Poached white fish gets mashed fine and stirred into a red curry and coconut milk sauce, where the fish disappears into the gravy instead of sitting in chunks. Its poaching water, scented with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, returns to the pot as the stock and keeps a herbal note under the richness of the coconut. Fish sauce and palm sugar set the salty-sweet balance. The rice noodles stay plain: they are boiled, rinsed, and simply drowned in hot sauce. All the seasoning has to come from the curry, which should be loose enough to run between the strands. In Thailand the plate comes with raw bean sprouts, morning glory, green chili, and lime for each diner to mix in. The dish began at royal banquets, yet today it is ordinary market-stall food.
Toasted rice powder, khao khua, is what turns seasoned ground chicken into larb. Rice browned in a dry pan and ground coarse gives the salad a nutty, faintly smoky grain flavor that nothing else copies. The dish comes from the Isan region of Thailand, where it is seasoned hard with fish sauce and lime and eaten scooped into lettuce leaves. Because the chicken cooks gently with a splash of water instead of oil, it stays soft and moist rather than browned and dry.
Five-spice powder, with its cinnamon and star anise, perfumes the soy broth, which sets moo palo apart from a plain soy braise even though both turn the same deep brown. Thai home cooks simmer pork and boiled eggs together for a long time and ladle the braise over warm rice with plenty of broth.
A whole piece of chicken thigh, rubbed with turmeric and cumin, comes on top of rice cooked in coconut milk. The spice and coconut reach right into the rice, and a spicy dipping sauce on the side sharpens the whole plate.
Ground pork hits a wok heated to the edge of smoking, and the Thai basil is added only seconds before the heat is cut, just long enough to wilt. Five chilies and five garlic cloves, pounded rather than finely minced, make this hot and garlicky, and it is eaten over rice with a fried egg on top.
Sour, spicy, and salty all hit at once in this shrimp soup. The base is chicken stock briefly steeped with lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir lime leaves, kept at a moderate simmer so it stays clear, and Thai chili paste turns it red. Shrimp need only a minute or two; once they curl and turn pink they are done, and longer cooking costs them their springy bite. Lime juice is stirred in after the heat is off, since boiling dulls its aroma.
Egg noodles show up twice in one bowl: boiled underneath and fried crisp on top, giving soft and crunchy textures in the same spoonful. This coconut curry noodle soup comes from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, with chicken thighs simmered gently in red curry and coconut milk until the meat falls apart. Sliced shallot, lime and cilantro cut through the richness.
Snappy shrimp and soft, ripe mango are pulled together by lime juice and fish sauce, salty and sour at once. It is best eaten cold, soon after tossing, before the mango and shrimp start shedding liquid into the bowl.
The sauce is cooked down until it coats a spoon thickly, so it clings to the thin slices of pork tenderloin rather than pooling around them. Peanut butter makes it nutty, and hand-torn kaffir lime leaves bring a sharp citrus smell up through the rich coconut.
Fish sauce and oyster sauce do all the seasoning, which gives the rice a briny savoriness quite unlike a soy-based fried rice. Shrimp, egg, and onion are about all that goes in, and in Thailand the shrimp is often swapped for chicken or crab, or dropped so the egg carries the dish alone.
There is no coconut milk here. Eggs and evaporated milk make the sauce, and instead of a soupy curry you get soft, moist curds clinging to the crab. The curry note comes from mild curry powder rather than paste, along with nam prik pao and Chinese celery.