Pad Thai | Simple no-wok recipe, cooks in 3 minutes
1,770,781
Published 2021-04-29
**RECIPE, MAKES TWO BIG PORTIONS**
For the sauce:
1 tablespoon fish sauce (can use soy sauce instead)
2-3 tablespoons sugar
1/2-2 teaspoons tamarind concentrate (I used 2 and loved it, but Lauren thought it was way too acidic)
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 teaspoon soy sauce (very optional)
***It's possible to replace both the fish sauce and tamarind with 3-4 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. Not the same, but pretty good.
Everything else:
1 bunch green onions
1 thumb of ginger
3-4 garlic cloves
1 red chili (very optional)
4-8 oz (60-120g) mung bean sprouts (I like a lot of them)
4 oz (60g) Pad Thai noodles (narrow, flat rice noodles)
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (shrimp or tofu work great too)
2 eggs
a big handful of roasted peanuts (50g?)
picked cilantro leaves and lime wedges for garnish
salt
oil
Mix up the sauce and let the sugar dissolve while you do everything else. Put a big pinch of salt in the eggs and beat them thoroughly — let them sit and loosen while you do the rest. Coarsely chop the peanuts.
Thinly slice the green onions, keeping the greens and whites separate. Peel and coarsely chop the garlic and ginger, and put them in the same bowl as your onion greens. Thinly slice the chili and put it in with the onions and ginger/garlic. Pick the cilantro leaves and cut the lime wedges.
Cut the chicken into three sections and then into very thin slices against the grain. Separate into two piles. Get the bean sprouts open and ready, get your salt and a glass of water handy.
Fill a nonstick pan with water (not the water you have in the glass) and bring it to a boil. Put in a pinch of salt and the noodles. Cook, stirring constantly, for half as long as the package suggests (I did 2-3 minutes). Dump them in a strainer and pour cold water over them to stop the cooking and keep them from sticking to each other. Leave them in the strainer for now.
Wipe out the pan and return it to the high heat, and put in a thin film of oil. Season the first pile of chicken with salt. When the oil just starts to smoke, put in the chicken and quickly get it spread out to a thin layer. Let it brown without moving it for a minute.
When the chicken pieces are opaque 2/3rds of the way up, put in half of your onion/ginger/garlic/chili mixture and stir it aggressively. Push it over to one side of the pan (it's ok that the chicken and veg aren't fully cooked yet), then pour half of the eggs into the other side and get them spread out to a thin layer. Let the egg partially solidify before breaking it up into sheets with your spoon.
When egg seems almost cooked, dump in half the noodles, a third of the sauce (you can always add more sauce if you think it needs it), half the bean sprouts, a few chopped peanuts, and stir to combine. Finally, use a splash of water from the glass to help you get everything stirred up, deglaze the pan, and get the level of saucy texture you want.
Put it on a plate, garnish with the cilantro, onion greens, lime wedges and more peanuts. Wipe out the pan and cook the second portion. (It's possible to cook both at once if you have a wok or a really big nonstick pan with a really powerful burner, but I think this comes out better if you do one at a time so it can get the necessary intense heat.)
All Comments (21)
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As an Asian dude one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when trying to stir fry is giant portion sizes. Stir fry is all about high heat and fast cooking, which keeps everything as flavorful as possible. Great video Adam.
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Little tips from a Thai guy. Fry thin slice shallot and add it to the sauce. This is one of the sources of Pad Thai aroma, together with fish sauce and tamarind.
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PSA: if you are trying to make this recipe you should be aware the tamarind concentrate Adam uses is about 2-6 times as strong as every other purée, extract, concentrate on the market. To give you a sense of this it has 31.25 grams of sugar per 100 grams however the next strongest has 11 grams per 100 grams thanks to how much the other brands dilute the mixtures. Please adjust your recipes accordingly e.g. I doubled/tripled up on mine and it worked quite well and my reproduction of this went from “nearly there but missing something” to bang on. 👍🏻
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I used to own a restaurant in Thailand. Thais don't prep the noodles with hot water at all. They set them in cold water and let them soak for hours. The noodles absorb water, soften, and go into a fried dish soft but slightly firm. The cooking does the rest, and the noodles taste and "mouth" feel right.
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Adam, months ago you gave us a brief glimpse into the depression you experienced while in Rochester. On my bad days, your story sticks with me and gives me strength. It does get better. Thank you.
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“Smells like feet, tastes like meat” is my new catchphrase.
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you just got the sub from me. No overproduced set, not cheesy royalty free music, no unneeded banter about how it's your great grandmother's favorite recipe. This is how these kind of videos should be done.
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What I love the most about Adam’s videos is they don’t just teach you recipes, they teach you techniques and WHY you use them.
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hi adam, i just wanted to say thank you for your recipes! im autistic and i have trouble with food (sensory issues), but ive found that eating healthy amounts is a lot easier when it's food that i've cooked myself, and i've gotten super into cooking thanks to your videos. this pad thai recipe has been a recent fixation of mine, i've found that it's a lot more convenient to soak the noodles in cold water at the beginning so that i can do all my prep while the noodles soak. it's usually perfect timing for getting the noodles to that parboiled level of softness (although i usually only make one portion, i don't think it'd work as well for multiple portions since the noodles would keep getting softer) & i rinse the noodles once in tap water to make them less sticky in the pan. i've tried using different ingredients and veggies like bok choy, enoki mushrooms and thinly sliced carrots and it's helped me start eating more types of ingredients as well, because i like the process of trying out new recipes enough to step out of my comfort zone w/ textures and tastes :) thank you adam!
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“I know exactly what he's talking about. I sprout mung beans on a damp paper towel in my desk drawer. Very nutritious, but they smell like death.”
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Adam, your style of adapting dishes to be cooked realistically in a 'restricted' environment is great. I currently have a very tiny japanese kitchen and it's even more restricted, but this is one of your videos I can follow!
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Perfect for single people with not much time to cook, faster than ordering food, for sure. Not too unhealthy, thank you for this recipe!
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Why does he rhyme everything in this video. It’s amazing.
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I remember some years ago I commented on your video asking to make Pad Thai and you said that you’d love to but it’s too difficult. Today marks a happy day in history
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Seeing Adam cook Thai food makes me soooo happy. And the fact that he mentions that the Thai-American version is sweeter is absolutely spot on lol. this is the kind of pad thai you get outside Thailand. It's not 100% authentic but it's pretty good!
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I've done variations of this recipe probably 10 times the last 2 weeks and I love it! I can now make pad Thai from thought to fork in less than 15 minutes! Keep it up with the effective recipes!
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“Smells like feat, tastes like meat” It’s either the quarantine or the fan base, it’s getting to him.
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“Smells like feet, taste like meat” is also accurate for actual feet.
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I was instantly inspired by this despite not having the right ingredients at home. I used Worcestershire because I wasn't leaving to get something that smells like feet until the weekend. I also added some Red Curry Paste and smoked paprika. The package of noodles said "Stir Fry" but I can't remember what they were exactly. Thick yummy noodle is all my brain can remember. Red bell peppers, loads of green onion whites, a good squeeze of lime juice, along with enough garlic and ginger to make my wife demand I eat in the other room. I literally wept when eating my strange home-made dish because the umami was beyond anything I've ever tasted (thank you natural msg in my tomato paste). Thank you Adam for showing me something that inspired my new favorite at home meal.
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I am SO happy you talked about this! People have this horrible misconception that a jet engine and a wok are necessary for wok dishes, and I've been unsuccessfully trying to tell them that you can do ALL of that just as well with small portions, a stove on high, and a little bit of time to let the pan warm up and store a bit of energy.
