Pad Thai with Chicken

You can also follow the instructions from the video below!

Pad Thai is a well known and popular dish in Thailand and the world, from street vendors to high end restaurants food. Pad Thai in Thailand uses shrimp the most, for street vendors they use dry shrimp, and for more expensive and high end restaurants use fresh shrimp. Here my recipe is from real and original Pad Thai so there are some ingredients you might not be familiar with for example, garlic chives (Chinese chives) and salty radish. There are available at Asian grocery stores. Thai restaurants in North America use green onion instead of garlic chives and they skip the salty radish but if you would like to try the original favor then here it is.

For 4 - 5 servings for a single dish meal.

Ingredients

1 pkg. (450 g)              dry Rice stick noodles

300 g                           or 2 small skinless boneless chicken breasts  

½ pkg (250 g)              pressed Tofu – cubed

3                                  eggs

½ - 1 cup                     chopped Salty Radish (optional)

3 – 4 cloves                 chopped Garlic

2- 2 ½ cups                 or half batch of Tamarind sauce from recipe (see recipe below)

9 -10 tbsp                    Vegetable oil (if it’s too dry you can add more)

2 - 3 tbsp                      Fish sauce  (you can replace fish sauce with soy  sauce if there is a seafood allergy issue)

1 tsp.                            Soy sauce
¹⁄₆ tsp                           Salt

½  tsp                           Fresh ground pepper       

1 lb                               Bean sprouts

1 bunch                        Garlic chives (Chinese chives) (cut into 1 inch long) or green onion cut into ½ inch

           Ground chili pepper

1 - 2                                                            Limes (optional)

  Instructions

1. Place noodles in bowl and cover in room-temperature water.  Soak approx. 1 hr. and drain.
2. Marinate chicken in soy sauce, salt and garlic at least 10 minutes.
3. Stir-fry tofu cubes with 2 tbsp oil until golden at medium high heat, remove tofu from wok.
4.  Fry eggs with 2 – 3 tbsp oil at medium high heat and cut the eggs in the wok with a turner of frying pan and remove from wok.
5. Stir-fry chicken with 2 tbsp oil until nearly cooked and adds radish and mix well, and removes from the wok.
6. Add noodles in the wok with 2 – 3 tbsp oil and stir-fry until noodles set and then add tofu, eggs and chicken, mix well. Pour tamarind sauce gradually until the noodles absorb all the sauce. In the same add fish sauce and stir-fry until noodles are soft and fully cooked.
7. Add fresh ground pepper and mix well.
8. Have a taste if the favor just what you want or need more fish sauce or tamarind sauce as your favor.
9. Add some bean spouts and Chinese chives. Turn the heat off. Mix the bean spouts and Chinese chives into noodles well and serve.

** Because of this recipe is pretty big it will take a while before everything is cooked, some ingredients need less time and some need longer time so I cook them separately and mix them later but if you make a small batch just for 1 or 2 servings you can stir-fry tofu and then add an egg and then add chicken and then add noodles and mix well with the sauces.

       

Garnish with

• Bean sprouts
• Chopped Chinese chives ( cut 1 inch long or you can substitute with green onion)
• Chopped peanuts
• Ground Chili pepper
• A piece of Lime (if you need more sour favor beside from Tamarind)

Sauce (makes 2 batches) you can make this sauce in advance, it can be kept in the fridge for 4 – 6 weeks.

200 g.            Tamarind (cake of dried fruit, see picture of Tamarind this blog)

4 ½  cakes     Palm Sugar ( 8 cakes in a pkg = 454 g) (see the picture of Palm Sugar this blog)

5 cups            Water

Instructions

1. Soak tamarind in water until soft, about 30 minutes (break apart the cake of fruit as it becomes possible to speed up the softening).
2. Discard the seeds and pods.
3. Dissolve palm sugar into tamarind mixture of heat.   Heat to boiling.
4. Set aside.