Thai food is a terrific phenomenon, as the Thais managed to preserve the originality 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 Thai People
Thai dishes are unique in that they use an incredible amount of all kinds of spices during their preparation. Hot pepper is very popular, which is the basis of many dishes. In general, Thai cuisine is very spicy.
The basis of food for residents of an exotic country is rice, which is considered the main Asian culture. Almost all Thai dishes contain this product. Moreover, rice of two varieties is used: sticky and white crumbly. The second is eaten with spoons as a side dish, and balls are rolled from the first, which are then completely put into the mouth. Roast with rice, liquid soup, sweet and sour rice ... The list of dishes from this product that Thais cook is simply endless.
But on the table to the side dish always serves a variety of sauces (soy, fish). However, it is worth noting that Thai dishes are not only rice. Vegetables, fish and meat are served with him.
The next most popular product after rice is soybeans, which are consumed in processed form. They make pasta, cottage cheese, sauce.
Many Thai dishes are prepared from fish. Mostly used are freshwater species 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.
It may seem that Thais eat exclusively fish. But actually it is not. There is meat in their diet. The most demanded is pork, chicken (meat of any poultry), from which simply delicious dishes are prepared.
Features of national food
Thai food has one feature. In Thailand, milk and all kinds of dairy products are almost completely absent. Thais themselves do not suffer from this in any way and replace them with coconut cream and milk. It is these products that enrich local food with an unusual taste, which in our conditions is difficult to reproduce.
The climate of Thailand gives its residents the opportunity to enjoy ripe fruits year-round. Bananas and papaya are very common here. But such fruits as rambutan, mangosteen and mangoes appear only in season, but at the same time they are always abundant.
Thai food is very unusual. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is prepared from very unusual products for us, and the methods of its preparation are unusual. Therefore, it is rather difficult to reproduce such dishes at home, because you need to achieve special taste shades. 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 certainly ask for supplements.
The dish turns out slightly spicy and spicy, which gives it a certain piquancy. A mixture of sauces and spices gives the familiar meat a completely new sound.
For cooking, you will need the following products:
- Beef Tenderloin - 260 g.
- One lime.
- Lemon grass - 20 g.
- Clove of garlic.
- Green cilantro.
- One chili pepper.
- Green onion.
- Basil.
- Chicken Broth - 120 g.
- Soy Sauce - 15 g.
- Cane sugar - 7 g.
- Olive oil - 12 ml.
- Corn starch - 12 g.
Cooking beef
Thai beef is cooked with lots of herbs. Cooking should start with preparing rice. Rinse it thoroughly until the water becomes 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 considers ready as soon as all the liquid has evaporated.
Meanwhile, you can move on to preparing meat. Beef must be marinated. Cut it into small slices and put in the dishes. Now you need to prepare the marinade: squeeze the juice from the lemongrass, and cut its flesh, add soy sauce and exactly half the prepared starch. The resulting mixture is sent to beef.
Chop the garlic and chop the chilli. Mix these ingredients and add fish sauce, as well as sugar and juice of the fourth part of lime.
Next, chop green onions, and dissolve the starch residues in the broth. Now fry the beef in a well-heated pan for several minutes, having previously removed lemongrass. Then add oyster sauce (prepared by us) and broth with starch to the pan. Mix all the ingredients and bring to a boil. At the end, basil and onions are added, after which the pan is removed from the stove.
Now you need to properly serve the dish. We put the beef on boiled rice, and on top we decorate it with green cilantro.
Pad Thai
We want to bring to your attention a recipe of one of the most popular and delicious dishes of Thailand. Pad Thai consists of fried flat rice noodles (its width is about half a centimeter) and tamarind (sweet and sour) sauce. Unfortunately, the second component is 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 seeds are good).
In the original version it is very difficult to reproduce the dish, 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 of Asian cuisine. For cooking, you will need special dishes - wok.
So, let's start by preparing the noodles. It must be boiled according to the instructions indicated on the package, and then rinsed. Next, clean the shrimp, removing all unnecessary from them. Beat several large eggs in a separate bowl with a whisk.
We chop the onion feathers, chop several shallots and one clove of garlic. Salted toasted peanuts should be chopped.
Next, we move on to cooking meat. Cut one or two hundred grams of pork into slices. We put the wok on the stove and heat the sesame oil on it. We put shallots and fry it for about a minute, then add meat and also cook a couple of minutes. After that, put garlic and shrimp in a pan and fry all the ingredients for several minutes, not forgetting to stir constantly.
Now you need to introduce eggs into the pan and mix everything right there. If the wok is too hot, then you can lift it and stir the contents on weight. The eggs should turn into something resembling flakes. This effect is not so easy to achieve.
Then you can reduce the heat and add rice noodles, mixing the ingredients, you need to let them sweat.
In a dish we put a tablespoon of ketchup, two tablespoons of fish sauce, a teaspoon of sugar (it is better to use cane or palm), one lime juice, sprouted bean sprouts. All components are mixed again and removed from the fire. Sprinkle the finished dish with onion greens, ground pepper and chopped peanuts. Having mixed the ingredients well, the food is served in special bowls.
Sirach sauce
Thai siraca sauce is incredibly fragrant and spicy, it fits almost any dish: rolls, fish, meat, and is also used for baking food.
Ingredients:
- Three cloves of garlic.
- Chili pepper - 65 g.
- A tablespoon of soy sauce.
- One onion head.
- Rice vinegar - 2 tbsp. l
- A tablespoon of vegetable oil.
- Tomato paste - 120 g.
- Sugar - 2 tbsp. l
Such a sauce was first prepared fifty years ago by one secret in a small village. Everybody liked him incredibly. And after some time the recipe was purchased and the sauce began to be produced in large volumes. Syracha is now very popular in Asian countries. It is used for baking, frying, as an ingredient for marinade.
Cooking should begin by frying chopped onions and chopped garlic in a pan. Next, 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 slightly, it must be crushed in a blender. It can be put in a glass jar, corked and stored in the refrigerator.
Massaman curry
A dish with such a beautiful name is in the TOP 50 of the best world culinary products. So, it is certainly worth a try. Massaman curry is prepared in every restaurant in Thailand. This variety of curry is considered the least spicy among the rest of the species. In addition, it is worth knowing 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 Siam Rame II, the massaman curry was present in the royal menu. The basis of the dish is pasta. It traditionally consists of shallots, dried red peppers, galangal, garlic, zira, white pepper, lemongrass, white coriander, salt and shrimp paste.
A stunning combination of beef pulp and potatoes stewed exclusively in coconut milk, complemented by aromas of spices, resulting in a very harmonious dish.
Ingredients:
- Coconut milk - 220 g.
- Beef - 430 g.
- Onion set - 18 pcs.
- Tamarind paste to taste.
- Curry paste massaman - 60 g.
- Fish sauce to taste.
- Cashew or roasted peanuts.
- White cardamom - 5 pcs.
- Bay leaf - to taste.
- Half a teaspoon of zira.
Recipe
In a dry wok, fry cardamom and zira. Cut the meat into slices. From the jar of milk (coconut) we get the cream and add them to the pan along with curry paste. Fry the ingredients until the cream begins to secrete oil. Next, put the meat in the wok and simmer it in the mixture until tender (thirty or forty minutes). In the meantime, prepare the onions and potatoes, peel them and cut into large pieces. Twenty minutes before the meat is cooked, add onion, potatoes and fish sauce to the pan. The dish should reach readiness. At the very end of cooking you need to add zira, cardamom, palm sugar, tamarind paste, bay leaf. The finished dish is served in a deep plate, sprinkled with peanut nuts on top.
Thai miracle
Panang Gai is a terrific 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 a curry and coconut milk, the dish simply will not work.
Ingredients:
- Chicken fillet - 350 g.
- Vegetable oil.
- A teaspoon of fish sauce.
- String Beans - 120 g
- Three teaspoons of curry paste.
- Two teaspoons of brown sugar.
- Coconut milk - 220 ml.
- Broccoli - 120 g
- Chile - 4 pcs.
- A pinch of lime leaves.
- Nuts - 60 g.
Recipe
Rinse and dry the chicken fillet, and then cut into slices. Next, grind broccoli into inflorescences, chop lime and chili leaves . Fry the meat a little in a pan, and blanch the beans.
In a saucepan, put the cream of coconut milk and bring them to a boil. Then add the curry paste and mix the mixture until dissolved. Now you can add milk, fish sauce, put part of the lime leaves and sugar. Following in the wok we send broccoli, chili, chicken and beans. All ingredients should simmer for ten minutes. Vegetables and filets should reach full readiness. The dish is ready.
Green curry
Thai green curry is one of the best dishes of 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 prepared.
Ingredients:
- Pea eggplant - one handful.
- Thai eggplant - 6 pieces.
- One chicken breast.
- Winter melon - 250 g.
- A can of coconut milk.
- Chili pepper - 3 pcs.
- Curry paste (green) - 3 tbsp. l
- Three cloves of garlic.
- Two tablespoons of fish sauce.
- Lime leaves.
- Palm sugar.
Vegetables must be prepared: pea eggplant torn from branches, cut round, cut melon into pieces, chopped pepper in the form of rings. Chili and garlic should be ground in a mortar and fry 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 part of the milk (coconut) and mix the mixture, put the pieces of chicken and continue to cook on very low heat. You can’t bring the dish to a boil, otherwise coconut milk can simply stratify.
Now you can pour out the remaining milk and cook, not forgetting to stir. Add sugar, fish sauce, pea eggplant, chili, lime leaves and warm everything again. At the very end of cooking, basil leaves are placed in curry. They are added to the dish and immediately removed from the fire. Curry is usually served with rice noodles and rice.
Thai salad
Som Tum Salad is incredibly popular among Thai women. The dish consists of almost all herbs and quickly cooks. There are two types of Som Tama: with salted crab and dried shrimp.
Ingredients:
- Green papaya.
- Two chili peppers.
- Six cherry tomatoes.
- Two cloves of garlic.
- Six long bean pods.
- A tablespoon of sugar.
- Lime.
- Two tablespoons of ground peanuts.
- A tablespoon of dried shrimp.
Papaya needs to be peeled and seeds removed from the core. Using a special device, rub the papaya in the form of noodles (the knife for the fruit is somewhat similar to our potato peeler).
In a mortar, grind chili and garlic. The sharper we want to get a salad, the more carefully we rub the seasonings. Then add tomatoes and beans to the mortar and squeeze the contents. Tomatoes should let the juice go. Now put the shrimp, papaya, peanuts and all other spices, squeeze 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:
- Tiger prawns (large) - 0.8 kg.
- Lime leaves.
- Lemon Sorghum - Four Stems.
- Ginger - 60 g.
- Two chili peppers.
- Sesame oil - 6 tbsp. l
- Juice of three oranges.
- Sea salt.
Grind ginger and garlic, after peeling. Stalks of lemongrass are cut into four parts. Finely chop the chilli and add it to the ginger and garlic. Pour orange juice, sesame oil, put salt, lemongrass, lime leaves and mix the ingredients well. The result is a marinade. We add shrimp to it and let them brew in the refrigerator for six hours. Wrap pickled seafood in several layers of foil and bake on coals or on a wire rack. Estimated cooking time - 10-15 minutes.
If you want to cook such a dish, then you can buy a set of Tom Yam soup, it has everything you need. This will make it easier for you and do not have to look for all the components separately for the preparation of the marinade.
Instead of an afterword
We have provided recipes for only the most famous and popular Thai dishes. In fact, there are an incredible number of them. It’s impossible to talk about everything within the framework of the article. Following the cooking tips, you can please yourself with a homemade Thai dish, or you will just be guided by what to order in institutions that practice cooking such food.