Pad thai

Pad thai is a dish of stir-fried rice noodles that Thai diplomats call the country's national dish. It balances three tastes, sour tamarind, salty fish sauce and sweet palm sugar, with egg, tofu, dried shrimp and bean sprouts, and since 2022 its name has been in the online Oxford dictionary. ¹²

Born in the 1930s. The dish appeared under Prime Minister Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, who wanted symbols to unite the Thai people at a time when colonial powers threatened Southeast Asia. By tradition, it was invented by his housekeeper. Kukrit Pramoj's novel Four Reigns remembers the era: state officials in every department were required to cook noodles for sale to support government policy. ¹

A Chinese noodle with a Thai taste. The first name was guay tiew pad thai, ‘stir-fried Thai noodles’; guay tiew is the Teochew word for noodles brought to Siam by Chinese immigrants. Thais found noodles in piping hot soup too hot and preferred them with little or no broth. The dry noodle dish mi phat Korat may also have shaped the recipe, and bean sprouts, rare in Chinese cooking, became essential. ¹

Three flavours. The sourness comes from tamarind paste, which coats the noodles, and is sharpened by the lime and vegetables on the side; when lime is expensive, bilimbi, madan, raw mango or star fruit can replace it. Fish sauce gives the salt and is used sparingly, because pickled radish and dried shrimp are salty already. Sweetness comes from coconut sugar, toddy palm sugar or cane sugar. ¹

How it is cooked. Preparation takes long and cooking is quick. Pork skin is fried for lard and crackling, then pounded dried chilli and red onion, dried shrimp, diced firm yellow tofu, pickled radish and pounded roasted peanuts go into the pan. Soaked noodles and the sauce follow, an egg is fried in a gap in the middle, and chives and bean sprouts finish the dish. ¹

The egg story. In the past, customers who wanted egg in their pad thai brought their own, and duck eggs were preferred. Cooks later began to charge for it, saying the extra lard cost money. This is probably how two familiar options appeared: pad thai with egg and pad thai wrapped in an egg omelette, the second perhaps to please tourists. ¹

Pad thai sen chan. On Thailand's eastern coast cooks simmer chopped blue crab and diced pork belly into a gravy called palo, seasoned with chilli, red onion, garlic, galangal, tamarind, sugar and fish sauce, and stew it for half an hour. The noodles are the thinner sen chan, and this version uses fewer ingredients than the central one. ¹

Pad thai or udon? Both are noodle dishes, but almost everything differs. Japanese udon is made from wheat flour kneaded with water and cut into thick strands, so it contains gluten and is usually served soft. Pad thai uses rice noodles, is stir-fried almost dry in a wok and gets its taste from tamarind, fish sauce and palm sugar rather than from a broth. ⁶¹

Why it matters to you. In the USDA database, 100 g of pad thai with chicken has 154 kcal, 8.1 g of protein, 7.5 g of fat and 384 mg of sodium, about 1 g of salt; a 300 g plate brings about 2.9 g, more than half of the WHO limit of 5 g a day. Classic pad thai contains egg, peanuts, dried shrimp and fish sauce, all allergens that must be declared in the UK and EU. ⁴⁵³