Traditional Thai Food
Thailand, like Vietnam which I wrote about recently, is a long country with significant variation between regions from north to south. Unifying features of Thai food though are the ubiquitous street food that is hugely popular in Thailand and the incredible balance of different flavors. Keep on reading this post if you want to find out more about traditional Thai food including this flavor balance and some of the general features of Thai cuisine as well as some famous Thai dishes that everyone should try!
What is Traditional Thai Food?
Thai cuisine is famous for its spiciness, but an important aspect of Thai cuisine is a balance of five essential flavors in dishes. These five essential flavors are spicy, sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. I think this really shines when you are eating Thai cuisine which I find very impressive so I have the utmost respect for Thai chefs.
Dishes are made spicy through the addition of chilis, usually bird’s eye chilis, which are found in dishes and are often available fresh as a side to add to your food. Sweetness is added in dishes through the addition of sugars like palm and brown sugar as well as certain fruits/vegetables. Saltiness and umami flavor are added through salt (obviously), soy sauce, and fish sauce, with the latter two also being common condiments. In order to make dishes sour and bitter, common additions to food are calamansi, limes, tamarind, lemongrass, and vinegar. Limes/calamansi and vinegar are also may be found as condiments.
Similar to my last post on Vietnamese cuisine, and a pretty common trend throughout Southeast Asia, rice is absolutely essential in Thai cuisine. Most dishes are served with rice and served to be shared amongst people, especially in home cooking. This rice is usually steamed jasmine rice but sticky rice is also common.
The rice is served with kaeng (gravy/curry dishes) and krueng kieng (side dishes). Soups (generally denoted with “tom” followed by the type of soup) are also very common in Thailand as well as fried (“pad” meaning friend in Thai) dishes. I think that traditionally kaeng, krueng kieng, and soups are what is most often consumed in Thai homes whereas stir-fried/fried dishes are more common as street food. Now, let me tell you about some famous Thai dishes!
Famous Thai Dishes
Pad Thai
Starting off with Thailand’s national dish, pad thai is a fried rice noodle dish that is hugely popular in Canada, especially at fast food Thai places. This dish is seasoned with soy sauce, oyster sauce, tamarind, and palm sugar for the classic Thai flavour balance. Eggs are then scrambled into the noodles and the dish is finished with ingredients like dried shrimp, peanuts, beansprouts, and chives.
Personally, I am not the biggest fan of pad thai and during my trip to Thailand there were actually do many dishes on my bucket list that I didn't really end up trying pad thai. At the same time I have noticed that a lot of Thai people seem to not hold pad thai in as high of regard as some other dishes. For example, Mark Wiens (my favourite food vlogger/blogger) lives in Thailand and isn’t a very big fan and I was watching this YouTube video and many comments expresses that Thai people prefer pad krapao and that this may be a more appropriate national dish to pad thai.
All of this is to say that if you haven’t tried pad thai definitely do but I think there are a lot of Thai dishes that many people may enjoy even more so if you have never tried Thai food before consider giving some other dishes on this list a chance too!
Pad Krapao
Onto the dish that I just mentioned, pad krapao is another amazing Thai stir-fry that I got the opportunity to try in Thailand at a couple of different spots! This stir-fry consists of a relatively simple set of ingredients; holy basil, meat (usually ground I believe), chilis, soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, garlic, and palm sugar.
The name of the dish translates to “stir-fried holy basil” and apparently pad krapao purists get quite upset when other vegetables/herbs are added to this dish because it makes it unauthentic and takes away from the star of the show. As I mentioned, many Thai people seem to take pride in this dish and it is apparently hugely popular in Thailand.
Mark Wiens actually has a restaurant in Thailand that just serves up this dish! I had the the opportunity to visit this restaurant, Phed Mark, during my time in Bangkok and I am so glad that I did! It was my favorite pad krapao that I had in Thailand and overall one of my favorite restaurants from my trip! This dish is an absolute must try and I highly recommend seeking it out if you haven't tried it yet!
Tom Yam
Another Thai favorite, tom yam is the quintessential Thai soup. This soup is aromatic, sour, and pretty spicy! It uses ingredients like chilis, galangal and lemongrass to make the broth which can be clear or creamy through the addition of coconut milk. There are many variations of tom yam but the most famous in Western countries is probably tom yam goong which is tom yam with shrimp.
I had never tried tom yam prior to visiting Thailand because I have heard a couple of times that most of the tom yam served in Canada is nothing like the tom yam served in Thailand! While I can't speak on the tom yam in Canada I can say that the Tom Yam in Thailand was amazing! I tried a fish tom yam in Bangkok and it was so flavorful and spicy and the fish was so tasty! The broth also didn't have a strong seafood flavor which I really enjoyed!
Som Tam
Som tam is actually a dish that may in fact originate in Laos and is very popular there which I didn’t know before but I think it’s worth mentioning here because som tam is also very famous in Thai cuisine. This dish is commonly referred to as green papaya salad in English and, as the name implies, often uses green papaya in the dish.
This doesn’t necessarily need to be the case though as som tam literally mean “pounded sour”, referring to the sour flavour and pounding used to make the dish. As such, you can find many different recipes for som tam using a variety of fruits, vegetables, seafoods, and meats. Generally, though, you can commonly find shredded or diced fruits/vegetables like green papaya, tomatoes, cabbage, etc. Importantly, green chilis are then added to make this dish notoriously spicy. Fish sauce and/or other preserved seafood is used to add umami and lime as well as tamarind are added to make this dish sour.
In Thailand apparently it is common, as it is usually prepared fresh, to ask the chef how spicy and sour you want your som tam. Additionally, palm sugar may be added in Thai versions but apparently the original Lao version has little to no sugar, so the sweetness may vary more regionally.
I first tried it this dish at Mae Sri in Montreal ,which is probably my favourite Thai restaurant I have visited in Canada, and I absolutely fell in love with this dish! Naturally in Thailand this is probably the dish I had the most by far and I found that it was consistently made really well everywhere I went! If you are every looking for a small meal or a salad to accompany your food I definitely think your first choice should be som tam!
Khao Soi
Thailand is famous for both curry and soups, with the famous Northern Thai dish khao soi seemingly falling between these two classifications. Khao soi is soupy curry that is thought to have originated from Burmese or Muslim Chinese immigrants in Northern Thailand. Interestingly, it is served with noodles as opposed to rice, perhaps owing to its more liquid consistency.
For the curry paste, it is made using many ingredients including ginger, garlic, chilis, coriander, cumin, cardamom, lemongrass, etc. Additionally, coconut milk, curry powder, fish sauce, turmeric, and some other ingredients are added to form the rich, curry-like, broth. This is of course served alongside accompaniments like lime, greens, fish sauce, chilis, and shallots so that each person can adjust the flavors of their dish.
During my trip I had the opportunity to visit Northern Thailand, specifically Chaing Mai and Chiang Rai. Chiang Mai is home to some of the most famous khao soi in the world and it is here that I tried the best khao soi I had and discovered that this may be my new favorite Thai dish! This dish is transcendent in flavor and I think it should be at the top of every foodie's bucket list for dishes to try!
Traditional Thai Food
That is all for this post! I hope you all learned a little more about Thai food beyond pad thai and thai green curry. I know I absolutely loved researching this topic because I think the ability to balance flavors in Thai cooking is so impressive and they are able to do it in so many unique ways. Whether it is a curry, salad or soup, Thai cooking is able to create a flavor that produces all of the tastants, launching a flavor assault on your taste buds.
Just like with my Vietnam post I looked through a couple of books on Thai cooking and the one that stood out was definitely Pok Pok by Andy Ricker. I really like the way that it is organized and the information that he gives with each recipe. Again, this is not sponsored, this was just genuinely my favorite book that I came across. So, checkout that book if you are interested in getting a Thai cookbook and checkout my other blog posts for more information of food around the world, restaurant recommendations, and my personal recipes!
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