Genius Recipes
This Simple, Genius Pad Thai Is All Thanks to a Chef’s Grandma
If you're not sure you'll be able to find all the ingredients, stop right there.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Creative Director and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
For determined but schedule-strapped home cooks, there’s little better than discovering that a trusted recipe recommendation is telling you: Do less.
Home cook friends, this is one of those moments.
The trusted expert here is third-generation chef Kris Yenbamroong of Night + Market restaurants in L.A., where his pad Thai could have easily involved any number of ingredients and steps—the grocery-ordering pathways are there; the line cooks are deft and committed.
But Yenbamroong’s ingredient list is surprisingly short, and could be found at virtually any grocery store in America. His steps are minimal and precise, too. The active cooking won’t push past two minutes; and even the prep time is meager (just a rough 30-minute noodle soak while you gather yourself).
All of this convenience is simply because it’s the pad Thai he grew up with—and how he wants it to taste.
“I like my sauce to be direct and sharp, which is why I use white sugar and white vinegar as opposed to the subtler (and harder to find) palm sugar and tamarind water,” he writes in the Night + Market cookbook. He learned his technique from his grandma Vilai, the first chef at his family’s restaurant Talésai that would lead to Night + Market as it exists today.
When I asked Yenbamroong if his grandma had always done the sugar and vinegar swap, he said he’d asked her the same thing a number of times and still wasn’t certain—and at this point it doesn’t really matter. Her simple sauce ratio—conveniently measured in equal portions of fish sauce, vinegar, and sugar—works out to be salty, sour, and sweet in balance, and entirely traditional for him.
The rest of Yenbamroong’s ideal pad Thai is equally streamlined and precise: He prefers dried noodles to fresh as he finds them more consistent, plumped and then stir-fried in the bubbling sauce. He scrapes the noodles to the side to quickly scramble an egg so you find it scattered in soft pockets, instead of as a slick of carbonara-like sauce. He throws the bean sprouts and thinly sliced scallions into the wok just at the end, off the heat, to keep their crunch but to let them mingle.
So next time you're near a store that carries Thai ingredients, feel free to pick up some palm sugar and tamarind (and dried shrimp and salted radish, while you're at it) so you can try other styles of pad Thai whenever the mood strikes.
But this one is altogether perfect as is. And, thanks to Yenbamroong and his grandma, there’s nothing to keep you from making it tonight.
| 4 | ounces dried rice stick noodles (1/8 to 1/3 inch wide) |
| 2 | tablespoons sugar |
| 2 | tablespoons fish sauce |
| 2 | tablespoons distilled white vinegar |
| 3 | tablespoons vegetable oil |
| 1/4 | pound chicken thighs, cut into bite-size slices (or extra-firm or pressed tofu or large peeled shrimp) |
| 1 | egg |
| 1 | cup bean sprouts |
| 2 | green onions, cut thinly on an angle into 2-inch-long slices |
| 2 | tablespoons crushed roasted peanuts |
| 1 | teaspoon roasted chile powder |
| 1 | lime wedge |
| 4 | ounces dried rice stick noodles (1/8 to 1/3 inch wide) |
| 2 | tablespoons sugar |
| 2 | tablespoons fish sauce |
| 2 | tablespoons distilled white vinegar |
| 3 | tablespoons vegetable oil |
| 1/4 | pound chicken thighs, cut into bite-size slices (or extra-firm or pressed tofu or large peeled shrimp) |
| 1 | egg |
| 1 | cup bean sprouts |
| 2 | green onions, cut thinly on an angle into 2-inch-long slices |
| 2 | tablespoons crushed roasted peanuts |
| 1 | teaspoon roasted chile powder |
| 1 | lime wedge |
Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Perhaps something perfect for beginners? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected]. Thank you to super-tipster, editor, and stylist Ali Slagle for this one!
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Written by: Kristen Miglore
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60 Comments
Clean it up, folks.
What kind of Wok are you using?
https://www.messyvegancook.com/thai-roasted-chilli-powder-recipe/
If you use it in this recipe (and I've studied authentic Thai cooking), taste the sauce and adjust if needed to your preferred balance of sweet, sour, and salt. Well, I've eaten at this restaurant and didn't care for it. So I plan to use these great speedy tips to make pad thai faster, but use jarred tamarind paste (Amazon) and pure palm sugar to enjoy all the luscious subtle layers of flavor that Thai cooking offers.
Apparently, you can take dry Thai chilis and dry fry in a skillet or pan until fragrant and then grind it.
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