When I think of Thai food I think of Pad Thai. Ever since discovering Joy’s Thai Food online 2 years ago, I’ve been making an adapted version of her recipe which I think has to be as good or almost as good as the local Thai restaurant we frequent. For 15 years I have had a love hate relationship with this popular Thai noodle dish. I loved eating it but hated preparing it. You see, I have this weird habit of trying to re-create dishes I love eating out at home. Most recipes I found used ketchup. So each attempt at making Pad Thai always resulted in ketchup tasting noodles. I even tried using boxed Pad Thai kits with not so good results. I wanted to be able to prepare Pad Thai as good as the local Thai restaurant down the street. This would be the only way I would ever be satisfied with preparing this dish at home. I am happy to report I’ve done it. It’s not quite as special as the Pad Thai at our favorite Thai restaurant but it’s as good or even better than most Thai places we’ve eaten at. This my friend, is a personal culinary achievement! And to think, I remember back in the day when I thought ketchup was the key ingredient in making Pad Thai. I’ve come a long way baby.
This recipe calls for tamarind concentrate and palm sugarwhich can be found at Asian grocers or online. If you have a Ranch 99 Market near you, they carry both. The best and easiest way I have found to make pad thai is to make the sauce in advance and use what you need for your stir fry noodles. The rest of the sauce you can refrigerate up to a month. If you do refrigerate the sauce and find it hardened, just microwave it for 30 seconds and it will warm nicely into a usable sauce. This recipe will yield about 1.5 cups of sauce and only uses approximately 3-4 tablespoons per serving. Also when making Pad Thai, it is highly recommended to make only 1-2 servings at a time so that your pan/wok is not overcrowded. Otherwise you will have mushy noodles that never fry very well. At first, you may think your noodles have too much sauce, but keep frying and tossing the noodles and the sauce will reduce and your noodles will soak some up as well. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or leave a comment. Enjoy!