The best Thai dishes: recipes and cooking features

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Thai cuisine is an amazing phenomenon, as the Thais have managed to maintain the full identity of their national cuisine, despite the huge influence from India and China. In our article, we want to talk about the most famous and popular dishes of this amazing country.

Products used by Thais

Thai dishes are unique in that an incredible amount of all kinds of spices are used during their preparation. Hot peppers are very popular and are the basis of many dishes. In general, Thai food is very spicy.

The basis of food for the inhabitants of an exotic country is rice, which is considered the main Asian culture. Almost all Thai dishes contain this product. Moreover, two varieties of rice are used: sticky and white crumbly. The second is eaten with spoons as a side dish, and the first is rolled into balls, which are then put whole in the mouth. Stir-fry with rice, watery soup, sweet and sour rice… The list of dishes from this product that Thais cook is simply endless.

But a variety of sauces (soy, fish) are always served on the table with a side dish. However, it should be noted that Thaimeals are not just rice. It is served with vegetables, fish and meat.

The next most popular product after rice can be considered soybeans, which are consumed in processed form. Pasta, cottage cheese, sauce are made from them.

Many Thai dishes are made with fish. Freshwater species are mainly used, which are found in local lakes and streams. Delicious soups and main dishes are prepared from fish, wrapped in banana leaves. Very popular in Thailand and seafood.

Thais seem to eat only fish. But actually it is not. Their diet also includes meat. The most popular is pork, chicken (meat of any bird), from which simply amazingly delicious dishes are prepared.

Features of national food

Thai food has one peculiarity. In Thailand, milk and all kinds of dairy products are almost completely absent. The Thais themselves do not suffer from this in any way and replace them with coconut cream and milk. It is these products that enrich the local food with an extraordinary taste, which is difficult to reproduce in our conditions.

Thailand's climate makes it possible for its inhabitants to enjoy ripe fruits all year round. Bananas and papaya are very common here. But fruits such as rambutan, mangosteen and mango appear only in season, but they are always in abundance.

Thai food is very unusual. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is prepared from products that are very unusual for us, and the methods of its preparation are unusual. Therefore, inat home, reproducing such dishes is quite difficult, because you need to achieve special flavors. But you can still try to cook the most popular dishes.

Beef dish

Thai beef is a completely new interpretation of a seemingly familiar dish. If you offer your guests such food, they will be very surprised and will probably ask for more.

The dish turns out to be slightly spicy and spicy, which gives it a certain piquancy. A mixture of sauces and spices gives familiar meat a whole new twist.

For cooking you will need the following products:

1. Beef Tenderloin - 260g
2. One lime.
3. Lemon Grass - 20 g.
4. Chive of garlic.
5. Cilantro greens.
6. One chili.
7. Green onion.
8. Basil.
9. Chicken stock - 120g
10. Soy Sauce - 15g
11. Cane Sugar - 7g
12. Olive oil - 12 ml.
13. Corn starch - 12 g.

Cooking beef

Thai beef is cooked with lots of herbs. Cooking should start with the preparation of rice. It must be thoroughly rinsed until the water is completely clear. After that, the cereal can be poured with water in a ratio of 1 to 1.5 and sent to cook over medium heat. Rice is considered ready as soon as all the liquid has evaporated.

In the meantime, you can move on to preparing the meat. The beef needs to be marinated. Cut it into small pieces and put in a bowl. Now you need to preparemarinade: squeeze the juice from the lemongrass, and cut its pulp, add soy sauce and exactly half of the prepared starch. The resulting mixture is sent to the beef.

Garlic should be crushed and finely chopped chili pepper. Mix these ingredients and add the fish sauce, as well as sugar and the juice of a quarter of a lime.

Next, you need to chop the green onion, and dissolve the remaining starch in the broth. Now fry the beef in a well-heated pan for several minutes, removing the lemongrass beforehand. Then add oyster sauce (prepared by us) and broth with starch to the pan. Mix all ingredients and bring to a boil. At the end, basil and onion are added, after which the pan is removed from the stove.

Now you need to properly serve the dish. Put the beef on boiled rice, and decorate it with cilantro on top.

Pad Thai

We want to bring to your attention a recipe for one of the most popular and delicious dishes in Thailand. Pad Thai consists of fried flat rice noodles (its width is about half a centimeter) and tamarind (sweet and sour) sauce. The second component is, unfortunately, very difficult to find. Therefore, tamarind sauce can simply be replaced with a mixture of fish and soy sauce with lime juice and vegetable oil (peanut and sesame are good).

It is very difficult to reproduce the dish in the original version, but you can cook a more adapted version, close to the original. All the necessary ingredients can be purchased in large supermarkets or in specialized shops for Asian cuisine. More forcooking, you will need special utensils - a wok.

So let's start by preparing the noodles. It must be boiled according to the instructions on the package, and then rinsed. Next, clean the shrimp, removing all unnecessary from them. Whisk several large eggs in a separate bowl.

Cut the onion feathers, chop a few shallots and one clove of garlic. S alted roasted peanuts should be chopped.

Next, let's move on to cooking meat. One hundred or two hundred grams of pork cut into slices. We put a wok on the stove and heat the sesame oil on it. Put the shallots in a bowl and fry it for about a minute, then add the meat and also cook for a couple of minutes. After that, put garlic and shrimp in the pan and fry all the ingredients for a few more minutes, remembering to stir constantly.

Now it is necessary to introduce eggs into the pan and immediately mix everything thoroughly. If the wok is too hot, you can lift it up and stir the contents by weight. The eggs should turn into something resembling flakes. This effect is not so easy to achieve.

Next, you can reduce the heat and add rice noodles, mixing the ingredients, you need to let them sweat.

In a dish put a tablespoon of ketchup, two tablespoons of fish sauce, a teaspoon of sugar (it is better to use cane or palm), juice of one lime, a squeeze of sprouted beans. Mix all ingredients again and remove from heat. Sprinkle the finished dish with onion, ground pepper and chopped peanuts. Having mixed the ingredients well, the food is served in specialbowls.

Sriracha sauce

Thai sriracha sauce is incredibly fragrant and spicy, it goes well with almost any dish: rolls, fish, meat, and is also used when baking food.

Ingredients:

1. Three cloves of garlic.
2. Chili Pepper - 65g
3. Table spoon of soy sauce.
4. One head of onion.
5. Rice vinegar - 2 tbsp. l.
6. A tablespoon of vegetable oil.
7. Tomato Paste - 120g
8. Sugar - 2 tbsp. l.

This sauce was first prepared fifty years ago by a Thai woman in a small village. Everyone liked him incredibly. And after some time, the recipe was bought out and the sauce began to be produced in large volumes. Siracha is still very popular in Asian countries. It is used in baking, frying, as an ingredient in marinade.

Cooking should start by frying chopped onion and chopped garlic in a pan. Next, you need to add pepper and tomato, and simmer the workpiece for five minutes. Now you can pour vinegar, soy sauce and put sugar. Cook the dish until the ingredients are soft. After our sauce has cooled down a bit, it must be chopped in a blender. It can be placed in a glass jar, sealed and stored in the refrigerator.

Massaman Curry

A dish with such a beautiful name is included in the TOP-50 of the world's best culinary products. So, it is definitely worth a try. Massaman curry is prepared in every restaurant in Thailand. This type of curry is considered the least spicy among other types. ExceptIn addition, you should know that the dish is prepared exclusively from beef. Of course, you can use chicken, pork, but then it will not be quite an original dish.

It is said that during the time of King Rama II of Siam, massaman curry was on the royal menu. The basis of the dish is pasta. It traditionally consists of shallots, dried red peppers, galangal, garlic, cumin, white pepper, lemongrass, white coriander, s alt and shrimp paste.

A wonderful combination of beef and potatoes stewed exclusively in coconut milk, complemented by the aromas of spices, resulting in a very harmonious dish.

Ingredients:

1. Coconut milk - 220g
2. Beef - 430g
3. Onion sets - 18 pcs
4. Tamarind paste - to taste.
5. Massaman Curry Paste – 60g
6. Fish sauce to taste.
7. Cashews or roasted peanuts.
8. White cardamom - 5 pcs
9. Bay leaf - to taste.
10. Half a teaspoon of jeera.

Dish recipe

Fry cardamom and zira in a dry wok. Cut the meat into pieces. Take out the cream from a jar of milk (coconut) and add it to the pan along with the curry paste. Fry the ingredients until the cream begins to release oil. Next, put the meat in the wok and simmer it in the mixture until tender (30 or 40 minutes). In the meantime, prepare the onions and potatoes, peel them and cut into large pieces. Twenty minutes before the end of cooking meat, add onions to the pan,potatoes and fish sauce. The dish should come to readiness. At the very end of cooking, you need to add cumin, cardamom, palm sugar, tamarind paste, bay leaf. The finished dish is served in a deep plate, sprinkled with peanuts on top.

Thai miracle

Panang Gai is an amazing dish. In our article we want to give a simple recipe for its preparation. The main thing is to find all the necessary products on sale, because without curry and coconut milk, the dish simply won't work.

Ingredients:

1. Chicken fillet - 350g
2. Vegetable oil.
3. Teaspoon of fish sauce.
4. String beans - 120g
5. Three teaspoons of curry paste.
6. Two teaspoons brown sugar
7. Coconut milk - 220 ml.
8. Broccoli - 120g
9. Chile - 4 pieces
10. Pinch of lime leaves.
11. Nuts - 60 g.

Cooking recipe

Chicken fillet must be washed and dried, and then cut into pieces. Next, chop the broccoli into florets, chop the lime and chili leaves. Fry the meat a little in a pan, and blanch the beans.

In a saucepan put the cream from the coconut milk and bring it to a boil. Then add the curry paste and stir the mixture until dissolved. Now you can add milk, fish sauce, put some lime leaves and sugar. Next, we send broccoli, chili, chicken and beans to the wok. All ingredients should simmer over low heat for ten minutes. Vegetables and fillets should reach full readiness. Dishdone.

Green curry

Thai green curry is one of the best dishes in northern Thailand. The combination of coconut milk with spicy spices gives an amazing taste, making the dish incredibly popular. Its basis is the green curry paste itself, which can be purchased or cooked.

Ingredients:

1. Pea eggplant - one handful.
2. Thai eggplant - 6 pieces.
3. One chicken breast.
4. Winter melon – 250g
5. Can of coconut milk.
6. Chili pepper - 3 pcs
7. Curry paste (green) – 3 tbsp. l.
8. Three cloves of garlic.
9. Two tablespoons of fish sauce.
10. Lime leaves.
11. Palm sugar.

Vegetables must be prepared: pick pea eggplants from the branches, cut round ones, cut the melon into pieces, chop the pepper in the form of rings. Chili and garlic must be ground in a mortar and fried in vegetable oil. Can be used for frying and coconut cream. Next, add curry paste to the pan and fry the ingredients for a couple of minutes. Then pour some of the milk (coconut) and mix the mixture, put the pieces of chicken and continue cooking over very low heat. Do not bring the dish to a boil, otherwise the coconut milk may simply separate.

Now you can pour the rest of the milk and cook, remembering to stir. Add sugar, fish sauce, pea eggplant, chili, lime leaves and heat everything again. At the very end of cooking, basil leaves are placed in the curry. They are added to the dish and immediately removed.him from the fire. Curry is usually served with rice noodles and rice.

Thai salad

Som Tam Salad is incredibly popular with Thai women. The dish consists of almost all herbs and is quickly prepared. There are two types of Som Tama: with s alted crabs and dried shrimp.

Ingredients:

1. Green papaya.
2. Two chili peppers.
3. Six cherry tomatoes.
4. Two cloves of garlic.
5. Six long beans.
6. Table spoon of sugar.
7. Lime.
8. Two tablespoons of ground peanuts.
9. A tablespoon of dried shrimp.

Papaya must be peeled and seeds removed from the core. Using a special tool, rub the papaya in the form of noodles (the fruit knife is somewhat similar to our potato peeler).

In a mortar, grind chili and garlic. The sharper we want to get the salad, the more carefully we rub the seasonings. Then add tomatoes and beans to the mortar and crush the contents. Tomatoes should release juice. Now we put the shrimp, papaya, peanuts and all other spices, squeeze out the lime juice and mix the ingredients thoroughly. The dish is ready!

Thai shrimp

Thai Shrimp is an incredibly delicious seafood dish. To prepare it, we need:

1. Tiger prawns (large) - 0.8 kg.
2. Lime leaves.
3. Lemongrass - four stalks.
4. Ginger - 60g
5. Two chili peppers.
6. Sesame oil - 6 tbsp. l.
7. Juice of three oranges.
8. Sea s alt.

Ginger and garlicgrind on a grater, previously cleared of the skin. Cut the stalks of lemongrass into four parts. Finely chop the chili pepper and add it to the ginger and garlic. Pour orange juice, sesame oil there, put s alt, lemongrass, lime leaves and mix the ingredients well. The result is a marinade. Add shrimp to it and let them brew in the refrigerator for six hours. We wrap marinated seafood in several layers of foil and bake on coals or on a grill. Estimated cooking time is 10-15 minutes.

If you want to cook such a dish, then you can purchase a set for Tom Yum soup, it has everything you need. This will make it easier for you and do not have to look for all the components separately to prepare the marinade.

Instead of afterword

We have provided recipes for only the most famous and popular Thai dishes. In fact, there are an incredible number of them. It is impossible to talk about everyone in the framework of the article. By following these cooking tips, you can indulge yourself with a homemade Thai dish, or simply find out what to order in establishments that practice cooking such food.