Introduction To Thai Food - Thai Curry, Pad Thai And Stir-Fry

Think of the worst food you've ever tasted. Soggy, boiled vegetables springs to mind-the kind with all the taste and nutrition leached out of them. No spice or texture, no freshness or goodness. Now think of the opposite, and you have heavenly Thai food. Fresh, spicy, salty, sweet and sour, with a variety of textures and temperatures (crispy and soft, hot and cold), Thai food is a taste explosion in every bite. Once you've tried it, you'll never go back to plain old meat-and-potatoes cooking again.

Another way to describe Thai food? Imagine Chinese food, but with more intensity. With more flavors, more aroma, spices, and textures. If you like Chinese food, you're going to fall head-over-heels-in-love with Thai food!

Thai Curry

The roots of Thai cuisine can be found both in regional tastes and flavors as well as in the influence of cooking styles from nearby cultures. Despite the fact that Thailand is at least partially separated from its neighbors by water, it has never isolated itself from other nations. Indian and Malaysian spices and dishes (such as curries) were brought with travel and trade, and the Thais were quick to add these wonderful flavors to their own unique version of curry.

Today there are four main curries in Thai cuisine:

Green

Red

Yellow

Massaman

Thai curry dishes start with a very intense and fragrant curry paste or sauce, usually made by hand with pestle & mortar. Once the paste/sauce is made, Thai curry is extremely easy to create, simply by adding any variety of meat, seafood, vegetables, or tofu and cooking it in the oven (like a casserole).

Thai Noodles

Thailand is also famous for its fragrant stir-fried noodle dishes. Most Thai noodle recipes call for rice noodles rather than those made with wheat or egg, although these can also be found in Thai cooking. Noodles were first brought to Thailand by the Chinese, many of whom remained in Thailand and integrated with the local society. For this reason, Chinese cooking has been a major influence in Thai cuisine, including cooking styles (the Chinese introduced the wok) and key cooking ingredients, such as soy sauce.
Names of popular Noodle Dishes:

Pad Thai

Land-Da Noodle

Pad Woon Sen

Pad See-U

Pad Kee-Mow (Drunken Noodle)

Thai Stir-Fry

From stir-fried local vegetables to dishes that combine meat, vegetables, tofu, or noodles, stir-fries are a common part of everyday Thai cooking. When creating stir-fry sauces, Thai chefs seek a balance of flavors-spicy, salty, sour, and sweet-by using ingredients like fish sauce, soy sauce, lime juice, lemongrass, fresh chilli (or chilli sauce), and a little sugar. Achieving this balance is not difficult, but it does take practice.

Names of popular Thai Stir-Fry dishes:

Ginger

Spicy Basil Leaves

Pad Prik

Prik King

Spicy Garlic

Cashew Nut

Broccoli

Michael Moran is the founder of CurrySimple Thai food products. With sauces made in Thailand, CurrySimple allows the average person the ability to cook a restaurant quality Thai meal at home. The concept evolved after spending years working in Thai restaurants while listening to his customer's conversations about the difficulty and complexity of cooking Thai food. Now with the development of the sauces (the hard part in Thai cooking), enjoying the taste and health benefits of Thai food is easy.
Visit CurrySimple for more product information and recipes.

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Thai Sauce, Pad Thai Recipe, and Thai Curry Recipe You Can't Live With Out

The secret to Thai food rely on two things, Thai Herbs and Thai Sauce. Herbs are all about the scent but the mouth watering taste comes from the sauce. Delicious Thai dishes come from perfect Thai sauce recipes. If you get the combination right, you are on your way to cooking perfect Thai Food.

The next time you find your self in a Thai restaurant, look over to your neighbors' table. Often time, you'll find small extra Thai sauces in those dishes, unless your particular Thai restaurant caters specifically to non-Thais. I guess what I'm saying is, the more Thai sauces you find on the tables the more authentic Thai food you'll get. It's usually a good sign if those sauces in the small plates taste good. You can assume that other sauces probably comes from a well made sauce recipes. Better yet, if you see condiments with Thai sauce and spices on the table, you know this restaurant is pretty authentic. Thai cooking is about blending herbs, spices, and sauces together. There's no better way to deliver all the intense flavors than Thai sauce. Thai sauce is divided into two category, cooking sauce and dipping sauce.

Thai Sauces:

Dipping Sauce

• Prik Naam Pla (fish sauce with sliced chili and lime juice) - a universal sauce that goes with almost every rice dishes. Some restaurants included it in the condiment.
• Prik Naam Som (chili & vinegar sauce) - condiment used to flavor noodles
• Naam Prik Pao (roasted chili paste) - condiment used in variety of dishes (soups, salads, stir fries). Some Thais use Nam Prik Pao as jam substitute to spread on toast.
• Aa-jaad (pickled cucumber Salad) - great dipping sauce for fried fish cakes, satay, and other fried appetizers
• Naam Jiem Saate (peanut sauce) - one of the most popular Thai sauces out side of Thailand. It tastes so good people do not only use it to dip Satay but use it as salad dressing, pizza sauce substitute, pad Thai sauce substitute, and much more. The American should call it "See Food" sauce, what ever food you see you dip in this sauce.
• Naam Jiem Talay (Seafood Sauce) - yes, you've guessed it. Naam Jiem Talay is a dipping sauce for all your seafood need. Move over melted butter! Get ready for a fiesta in your mouth. This bad boy is full of flavor and once you take a bite, the intense combination of spicy, sour, salty and sweet will knock your socks off (if made right).
• Naam Jiem Buoi (plum sauce) - popular among kid and people who cannot handle spicy food. Nam Jiem Buoi is great for any fried dishes.
• Jig Choe (vinaigrette soy sauce) - use for making hot and sour soup and dipping sauce for pot sticker and Dim Sum.
• Naam Jiem Gai (chicken dipping sauce) - sweet and spicy sauce. Great with BBQ chicken
• Naam Jiem Seir Rong Hai (crying tiger sauce) - Crying Tiger is one of the more popular dishes in the US. Seared medium rare beef served with dipping sauce, consists of fish sauce, ground roasted rice, chili pepper, soy sauce, and lime juice.

Cooking Sauce

• Nam Pla (fish sauce) - for adding salty flavor. Use in soups, stir fry, and making sauces. You will find fish sauce in dishes like Tom Yum (hot and sour soup), Tom Kah (coconut soup), and pad krapow (stir fry holy basil).
• Nam Som Sai Choo (vinegar) - for adding sour flavor. Use in soups, sweet and sour stir fry.
• Pad Thai Sauce - use for cooking pad Thai. Pad Thai recipe will be given in our later article.
• Phu Khao Tong (Green lid soy sauce) - flavored soy sauce. one of the important sauce which included in many Thai stir fry sauce recipe
• See iew Dum (Sweet black soy sauce) - for making Pad See iew (Sweet sir fried noodle with chinese broccoli and meat). Ingredient in Khao Mun Khai (Broiled chicken meat over flavored rice) dipping sauce
• See iew khao (light soy sauce) - important sauce in many dipping sauce.
• Tammarin Juice - important ingredient in pad thai sauce. Included in some dipping sauce and Thai Khang Som soup (Sour soup with tammarin based)
• Oyster sauce - ingredient in many Thai stir fry sauce recipe including sweet and sour stir fry.
• Curry paste - All curry pastes have similar herbs and spices but different proportion.

Thai Curry recipe will be given in our later article.

• Green curry paste
• Yellow curry paste
• Red curry paste
• Mussamun curry paste
• Chu chee curry paste
• Panang curry paste
• Khua Kling curry paste (Southern Thai food)
• Khang Pa curry paste (Not popular in foreign country)
• Khang Som curry paste (Not popular in foreign country)

As you can see from the list above, Thai food rely mostly on Thai sauce. When you mix and match sauces, they become totally different dishes.

Even the same dishes, different proportion make a big difference in flavor. That's why sauce recipe is the key to separate good Thai food from outstanding Thai delicacy.

Like I said "If you got that combination right, you are on your way to cooking perfect Thai Food".

Who Loves Thai Food?

We do! And we hope you do too - or, at least we hope you will soon! Anyways, LocalThaiFood is run by just a few of us locals here in Southern California and we'd love to meet you!

Why Thai Food?

That's a great question. Now here's a great answer: we like Thai food. Well actually, we love Thai food. And we love Thai food so much that we think you should love it too. And so it's our goal to provide everyone who loves Thai food - or anyone who loves food in general - with a fast and easy way to find the food they love.

What is Local Thai Food?

The answer is pretty simple: spicy and delicious Thai food so close you can smell it! Well, maybe not that close, but close enough to fill yourself on great food, and fast. You see, LocalThaiFood.com's job is to help you find Thai restaurants that are in your immediate area, or as close as possible, and to help you choose the one that best fits your Thai food needs.

Search for Thai restaurants near you at LocalThaiFood.com.

Read all about Thai sauce and Thai recipe, Pad Thai recipe, or Thai curry recipe at ThaiSauce.net [http://www.thaisauce.net/].

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