Basic Thai Cooking





This blog is about basic cooking. In Thailand we start the name of food from how it is cooked like Tom-Kha-Gai is coconut chicken soup which “Tom” mean soup for example. So I will tell you about all of the basic Thai cooking that we use the most. Starting with

-          Tom : it means boil or soup.  Most of this category of food have liquids as the main ingredient.  We have a lot of menu from this category of cooking Ex. Tom Kha Gai is coconut chicken soup, Tom yum kung is famous Thai spicy shrimp soup, Tom Hed Hom is dry shitake mushroom soup and anything else that starts with the word Tom you can expect that it is a soup in Thai food.

-          Pad : it’s mean stir fried, This is my favorite category of cooking, because I can stir fried anything(I mean anything!!).  Thai folk stir fried everything  vegetable , rice, noodle, meat or anything you can think of the key of Pad is you have to wait until the oil is really hot to start cooking to get the best result. Example of Pad food is “Pad Thai” it is a Thai rice noodle with a special sauce with bean sprout and peanut. “Pad ka prow” is Thai Basil stir fried and a lot of Pad that I will tell you about will be in the Pad menu later.



Pad-Thai



-          Kang: It’s mean curry, In Thailand we have a lot of curry.  The main ingredient of curry is the paste, differences in pastes will make a curry taste different.  For me I separate curry into 2 kinds.



1.       Curry with coconut milk; this kind of curry is the most famous around the world. Sometimes people think that every curry has coconut milk, but actually this is not true. Example of this category of curry is Green curry, Red curry, Panang curry.

2.       Curry without coconut milk; this kind of curry not to many people(non-Thai) know about but it is also famous in Thailand too.  We use paste and water boil it, add meat, vegetable and season it with fish sauce (I’ll talk about fish sauce later) sugar etc. depending on the recipe and the kind of curry.  Example:  “Kang Som” it means sour curry, but actually tastes spicy and sour (in the good way) and a little bit sweet (my family recipe).  Usually we use fish or seafood to be the main meat with a lot of vegetable. :”Kang Ped” means spicy curry made from red curry paste with added water, meat and herb, also season it with fish sauce.

We still have more I’ll tell you next time.

-          Tod : It means fried any kind, deep fried, pan fried  EX. “tod mon Pra” is Fried Fish Cakes ground fish mix with curry paste, thin slice green beans and deep fired. “Gai tod  Kartaim prik Thai” Fried chicken with pepper garlic .  I still have a lot more to tell you about Tod recipes in the future.

-          Yum : Yum in Thai means spicy salad.  Usually this category will cook the meat first (Some time not even cook the meat) and season with chili, lime juice and fish sauce.  Also in this menu I included labb, som-tom, Num tok and anything else that uses the same category. Ex. “Yum won sen” is a spicy clear noodle salad.

Grill Chicken

-           Ping-Yang : It means grill.  This is my grandma’s favorite category of cooking (She loves to grill), because Thai food has to have a lot of flavor.  So the key to our grilled food is marinade.  We have different kinds of marinades that make the food amazing like “Satay”.  This is used to marinate meat (Pork or chicken) with coconut and spices.  "Gai yang” is a grilled chicken marinated with garlic and peppers.  I will deliver the entire recipe from my grandma to you.

-          Nung : It means Steam.  We steam everything from main course foods to dessert. Ex. “Pra nung ma now” is a steamed fish with spicy and sour sauce. “Khaw neaw  and ma mong” is steamed sticky rice with coconut milk served with mango.  This is one of our Thai Famous desserts.

-          Tum: It means pound.  In this category we have a special tool call “Krok and  Sahk” in English it is a mortar or grinding bowl and a Pestle.  In Thailand we have 2 kinds to use in the house.  One is made from the rock and another kind is made from a clay bowl and a wood pestle (this is the one I have in USA).  Usually Tum is used to make pastes and make “Num-prick” or Thai spicy dip.  Also we use “Krock and Sahk” to make “Som Tum” or papaya salad.  That’s right we make salad with a mortar and it makes it very juicy and tasty…Yummy    






 Krok and  Sahk



-          Anything else:  it means anything else that I cannot put it in any category of cooking or a new style of cooking discovered, so I will put it in this category.

That’s all I can think of right now, if I have more I will post it later. I'll see you next time for Pad-Thai recipe!!!