Thai Appetizers
It's a real treat! normally served warm from the bowl as a main dish with steamed rice, this recipe is served on a plate cold, as an appetizer, with a delicious and slightly spicy tomato and mint salsa.
Try this recipe for Moo Dad Deaw, our semi-dried deep-fried pork snacks. They are one of Thailand's most popular appetizers, and this recipe shows you how easy it is to prepare them for your next dinner party or as a great snack for you alone in front of the TV.
Yam Blah Muek Yad Sai Moo is an outstanding dish, made by stuffing the body of little squids with ground pork that's seasoned with Thai herbs and spices. They are then grilled and sliced, making neat little 'squid sausages' to be eaten with wood sticks, along with a spicy, sweet, and salty relish that's just sooo good.
This easy to follow recipe shows you the best techniques for making your satay taste and look the way they do in Thailand. Prepare these delicious pork or chicken satays and serve with either peanut sauce, cucumber relish, or both.
Worawut's Thailand style fried chicken have an amazing blend of flavors and aromas from fresh lemongrass, galagal, kaffir lime, and dry roasted cumin, coriander, and peppercorns. They are very easy to make up in advance, making them an easy party food.
Thai Main Dishes
Kaeng Hunglay, or Kaeng Hung Leh, is a northern Thailand-style sour and sweet curried stew made with pork belly or other fatty pork meat that is quite different from the well known green, yellow, and red Thai curries. Kaeng Hunglay is flavored with Garam Masala, an aromatic blend of spices often used in Indian and Burmese cuisine, and doesn't contain coconut milk. The stew has the warm, sweet flavors of toasted coriander, black pepper, cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon, and a rich and hearty taste.
Panang beef is one of Thailand's most popular curry dishes. You'll know it from the distinct flavors of mace, cardamom, cumin, and coriander seed. It is delicious and creamy, not very spicy, and quite easy to make up for a quick and easy one dish meal with the steamed rice.
This Kaeng Matsaman Gai, or Massaman Chicken Curry, is made with the home prepared curry paste that I made previously. The paste does quite well in the freezer so you will always have some when needed. Watch me as I prepare this delicious chicken curry, flavored with toasted spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and coconut.
Follow this easy video demonstration and you can make this delicious and very traditional Thailand plate lunch with chicken, eggplant, and spicy red chili paste over rice.
Soft and juicy beef steak slices and crispy fresh mixed peppers are combined in a delicious brown sauce in this typical Thailand-style stir fried dish. It can be made a variety mild peppers, including regular bell pepper or whatever type you have locally, for an equally pleasing result.
Pad Makua Yao Moo Sap is a delicious Thailand-style stir fried plate lunch combining lean ground pork, long green eggplant and sweet Thai basil. It is very easy to make when you follow our step-by-step video recipe.
Whip up the traditional and very spicy flavor of this Thailand style stir-fried mushrooms with a few simple ingredients and under 10 minutes of your time, Serve it as a delicious one-dish meal with rice or as part of a complete meal with other foods.
Simply bursting with flavor, this Thailand style cashew chicken features big juicy chunks of chicken leg meat stir fried together with browned cashews nuts, garlic, onions, mild red and green chili, green onion, and mild sun-dried chilies all in a thick and sticky sauce.
Enjoy a Thailand twist on an old time Chinese food specialty with this spicy version of our broccoli with beef tenderloin. It has all the zip and flavor that you would expect from Thai food, and in this recipe we have served it with delicious and healthy whole grain jasmine rice.
Learn to make these very special Thailand style pork spare ribs with this easy to follow recipe. Infuse your next plate of ribs with the delicious flavors of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, coriander root, galangal, and black pepper.
Pad Prik Khing is a delicious Thai dish made with thin pork belly slices fried together with our strong red chili paste and green beans. It is a classic Thai dish that most people have never tried. You'll love it!
This delicious and easy to prepare Thai stir fry has a light but flavorful sauce. You can substitute the vegetables used to create your own unique dish. We've used broccoli, cauliflower, and kale for an equally tasty result. For a vegetarian version, use cubed tofu instead of the shrimp, and season with Thai soy sauce.
This Thailand-style ginger chicken recipe features wafer-thin slices of chicken breast cooked with a healthy portion of fresh ginger, cloud ear fungus, green onion, and mild red chili, all in a delicious sauce flavored with fresh garlic and black pepper.
This very special Thai red curry features oven-roasted chicken that is slowly simmered in a thick, sweet, and rich sauce made with fresh Longan fruit, Pineapple, Coconut Milk, and a delicious array of traditional herbs and spices. Longan, known as Lum Yai in Thailand, is one of our prized fruits grown in selected areas of northern Thailand.
We start by marinating the calamari in fresh lime juice that softens it and mellows any fishy flavors. After steaming, all you'll taste is delicious calamari that you could eat all by itself it's so good. But when topped with this Thai seafood sauce made with loads of fresh garlic, cilantro, hot chilies, fresh lime juice, and coconut sugar, you have add a whole different dimension of authentic Thai flavor to an old favorite.
This oven broiler method using a traditional Gai Yang marinade recipe produces a beautiful grilled chicken with crispy golden brown skin and tender juicy meat. If you have a barbecue and want to cook the chicken in the traditional way, just cook it long and slowly until it's just right.
Then try this authentic Thailand style fried fish with delicious sweet and spicy chili sauce with lots of garlic. Known here as Plah Rad Prik, the recipe can be used with many different types of fish, including Bass, Bluegill, Crappie, or other types of perch. Here we used the Nile Talapia, a farm raised fish that is very popular in Thailand.
Steaming a whole fish like this can seem a little daunting, but once you have the steamer as one of your kitchen tools, the rest is really quite easy. Just steam the fish for about 7 - 8 minutes, depending on the size, then top with this delicious homemade salsa prepared with red chili, garlic, cilantro, and fresh lime juice.
It combines wafer thin chicken breast, big pieces of crushed garlic, and crisp fresh flowering chives. The Chinese chives, known in Thailand as Dok Mai Gui Chai, can be combined with chicken, pork, or shrimp using this recipe, but are very flavorful when just cooked alone with garlic, fish sauce, and a little sugar for an authentic Thai taste.
In this recipe we use our own homemade basic curry, so the dish is loaded with beautiful bits of red, brown, green, and yellow color. The flavor is is that of slightly sweetened coconut and fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal, and coriander root.
It's called Moo Palo, a rich and flavorful stew. It's prepared by braising pork belly slices in an herb paste made from coriander root, garlic, and black pepper, then simmering them with hard-boiled eggs in a sweet sauce that includes the flavors of cinnamon, star anise, cumin, coriander seed, and Sichuan pepper.
It is typical of the type of curries served in Central Thailand, where the soup base is made with coconut milk and seasoned with strong red chili paste. The texture is smooth and creamy and only a little bit spicy. You'll love it!
Known as Moo Hong, it is stewed pork belly made by braising chunks of pork in an herbaceous sweet paste made with garlic, coriander root, black peppercorn, and coconut sugar, then stewing it slowly in a gravy seasoned with dark soy, oyster sauce, and star anise.
Then try this delicious, authentic, and quite unusual dish made with juicy chunks of chicken breast in ground lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and garlic.
Try this Goong Gratium, made with delicious, plump, and juicy prawns that are cooked in a flavorful sauce made with coriander root and garlic. It's easy to make at home when you watch our step-by-step recipe video.
Try this Thailand version of the popular Chinese sweet and sour pork. While it has some things in common, like a thick and sweet sauce made with plum sauce, that may be where the similarities end. We take it up just a notch by adding a few Thai Long Chilies, which add a hint of spiciness and an herbaceous layer to the sauce. Try it, you'll like it.
Try the Thailand-style stir fried clams we call Hoy Lai Pad Prik Pao. Cooked in a rich, but not too spicy-hot chili sauce, they are amazing, and the addition of a generous portion of fresh Thai basil and mild red chilies makes a beautiful plate of clams like no other.
Try this excellent Thai stir fry made with plump and juicy prawns, delicious sweet peppers, and garlic. Known as Pad Prik Yuak sai Goong (ผัดผริกหยวกใส่กุง) in Thailand, or 'Stir-fried Sweet Peppers with Shrimp', it is perfect for people who want to eat Thai foods but don't care for spicy stir-fries.
Try the recipe that I just posted. It's like a delicious Thai-styled beef stew that's loaded with chunks of juicy beef and soft potatoes in a rich, sweet and creamy coconut soup. Kaeng Matsaman Curry (แกงมัสมั่น) is distinctly different in flavor from other red curries, due to the addition of star anise, cardamom, and cinnamon.
Let Khun Worawut show you how easy it is to make his delicious recipe for Kaeng Kiew Waan Gai. This recipe is packed with chunky chicken pieces, green eggplant, green peppercorns, mild red chili, and a whole lot of amazing flavors. Watch the video now.
This video recipe teaches you the step by step process for cooking great Panang curry at home. Watch our restaurant perfected recipe cooked in a modern western-style home kitchen so you can easily recreate this excellent Thai dish for your family.
Kaeng Kari Gai is one of the most commonly known dishes served at Thai restaurants outside of our country. Westerners will find the creamy sweetness of the coconut and the subtle flavors of cumin, coriander, and just a hint of Thai chile very enjoyable.
Thai Sauces and Condiments
This recipe for homemade Pad Thai sauce is quite easy to make. Just six easy to find ingredients in the right combination will give your Pad Thai Noodles an authentic Thailand taste.
Balance of flavor is important in any type of cuisine. This is especially so with Thai food, and many times nearly all of the flavor will come from one or more of the dipping sauces that we serve on the side. This quick and easy dipping sauce recipe is guaranteed to satisfy the even the most discriminating Thai palate.
Traditionally used a a condiment for Gai Yang, our Thailand style barbecued chicken, Nam Jim Jeaw is a dipping sauce made with toasted and ground white rice, dried chilies, fresh lime juice, sugar, and fish sauce. It can be used to add a burst of authentic Thai flavor to any type of grilled meat.
Try this delicious spicy, sweet, and sour dipping sauce that we call Nam Jim Seafood. You'll appreciate how easy it is to whip some up. With just a few simple ingredients you can add an authentic Thai flavor to meats, fish, and snack foods.
This bright, fresh, crisp, and delicious condiment or dipping sauce is a must have when you are serving satays, but you'll also see it served as a condiment for other foods made with Thai yellow curry as the spice. Click here for the Thai Cucumber Relish recipe.
This homemade Thai peanut dipping sauce is made with red curry paste, so it has an amazing array of flavors from fresh lemongrass, galagal, kaffir lime, and dry roasted cumin, coriander, and peppercorns, and more.
Try Khun Worawut's recipe! It has the amazing array of sweet, spicy, and smokey flavors that you would expect to find in a Thai roasted chili sauce, without a bit of anything non vegetarian. Try it, You'll love it.
Nam Prik Pao (Roasted Chili Paste) is a Thai chili paste made with 2 kinds of chilies, garlic, shallots, tamarind, and shrimp paste. The ingredients are roasted before blending, giving recipes a rich combination of smokey, spicy, and sweet flavors. This delicious paste is used to add flavor to foods.
Nam Jim or Nam Chim is Thai for Dipping Sauce. It's a generic term that can refer to many different kinds of dipping sauces in Thai cuisine. Most are a combination of spicy, salty, sweet, and sour flavors.
Thai Recipe Components
Making perfectly crispy and golden brown fried shallots can be a challenge. So many of our Thai recipes call for fast cooking or high heat, but to make your shallots come out just right you need to keep the heat low, and fry them for at least 5 minutes.
Tamarind Paste (Makaam Piak) is a soft, thick, and creamy paste made by reconstituting dried tamarind fruit. Once fully dried, tamarind can be kept in a tightly sealed container in your kitchen pantry for a long, long time. If you do a lot of Thai cooking, we highly recommend that you take some home the next time you see it, and keep it on hand so you can make a little fresh paste as you need it.
Prik Kaeng Panang is a lovely Thai curry paste that is used to make Panang Curry dishes. You'll know it from its golden orange color and the flavors of mace, cardamom, and toasted seeds. You can always buy a packaged curry, but if you are serious about Thai cooking there is no better way to really learn how to customize the flavor than by starting with all the raw ingredients.
You can always buy a packaged curry, but there's nothing more satisfying in Thai cooking than making your own from all the raw ingredients. Kaeng Matsaman is a southern style curry that is rich with the flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cumin, and coriander seed.
The most common red curry is probably Prik Kaeng Ped, the one that most people are talking about when they say Thai Red Curry. But there is also Massaman and Panang, which are also red in color. So what's the difference? Just a a few extra spices added to this basic red curry recipe and you'll have a whole different flavor.
Well think again. This method using a medium-sized pot with a vegetable steamer produces a lovely and perfectly acceptable sticky rice. Use it when you want to try out some of our authentic Thai desserts that require sticky rice.
This step-by-step video recipe shows you exactly how to make Thai green chili paste (curry) at home in your western-style kitchen. Nothing is quite as rewarding as making your own curry from scratch.
Learn to make your own Kaeng Kari paste at home. It's easy with this step-by-step recipe. Thai Yellow Curry is probably one of the first tastes that westerners will think of when they talk about the flavors of food in Thailand. Its sweet and creamy richness tends to tone down the overall spiciness of the curry, making it one of the more popular dishes found on restaurant menus outside Thailand.
Moo Grob (หมูกรอบ) is Crispy Deep Fried Pork Belly that is usually served as the meat ingredient in one of several different Thai dishes. However, it's so good that some people will just eat it all by itself or with one of our dipping sauces for meat. You can easily make your own Moo Grob at home, and you'll need to make it up first before your try our recipes for Pad Kaphrao Moo Grob, Pad Kana Moo Grob, or Pad Phrik Pao Moo Grob.
Making your own Thai chili paste, or curry, is an important part of truly learning about Thai cuisine and why it taste the way it does. Thai Red Curry has an amazing blend of flavors and aromas from fresh lemongrass, galagal, kaffir lime, and dry roasted cumin, coriander, and peppercorns. Follow our easy recipe and you can learn to make Phrik Gaeng Ped.
