A Chef’s Guide To Mastering Pad Thai
What makes a great pad thai? There's its signature (and unbeatable) flavour balance of salty, sweet and sour; its symphony of texture (silky noodles, crunchy bean sprouts, a little bite from the proteins). And there's the fact that, if you know what you're doing, you can knock this dish together in just a few minutes: Aside from soaking the noodles, which can be done in advance, the actual cooking of pad thai is a quick affair—sometimes so fast that it can be intimidating to home cooks who haven't tried making it in their own kitchens before.
Recently, I got a chance to take a lesson on assembling pad thai with Chatsuda Drouin, who goes by Chef Ko and operates three locations of Isaan Der, a Toronto restaurant that specializes in Northeastern Thai cuisine. Many of the dishes on her menu are so regionally specific—fresh khao piak noodles in pork bone broth, fermented fish paste—out-of-towners flock to her restaurants to enjoy them. Despite this, pad thai remains a popular order at all three locations. (I would know: I regularly picked up an order at their Dundas Street West location when I lived in the neighbourhood almost ten years ago.)
Chef Ko brought me into the restaurant's kitchen, fired up one of their commercial-style woks—a huge and extremely hot cooking device that I'd never used before—and got me to work. It took all of three minutes from start to finish, and I still learned quite a bit.
Cooking Order Matters
Chef Ko is very specific about the order of her pad thai ingredients: egg, noodles, tamarind sauce, proteins such as tofu or shrimp (the exception is chicken, which should be added before the noodles), seasonings and produce. A lot of Westernized pad thai recipes meant for home cooks will have you cracking and adding the eggs midway through the process. This is a mistake, says Chef Ko. Once I got the wok heated up and drizzled with a bit of vegetable oil, she had me crack the egg in first, pushing and scraping it around to get a very quick scramble. Then, she instructed me to pull the scrambled egg up to the side, where the heat was less intense (in a regular frying pan, the edge of the pan is fine too). Then and only then, she adds the noodle. "The egg sticks to the noodles if you add it later," she says.
Don’t Mix The Sauce In Immediately
After I added a large handful of pre-soaked rice noodles into the wok, I tossed them with the ladle a few times and within seconds they got more pliable, started taking on some colour and reached an al dente-like texture. That's when I added a large scoop of tamarind sauce. Immediately, Ko instructed me not to touch the noodles and instead let them bubble in the sauce for a few moments. (I will admit, I was puzzled by this instruction at first—wouldn't the sauce burn?—but that's actually what this technique is meant to avoid. When cooking on high heat in a wok, spreading the sauce thin across the noodles too early leaves it susceptible to burning, she says.) Then I immediately dropped in pre-measured amounts of seasoning (salt, chicken bouillon essence) and protein (sliced tofu and shrimp). A couple of seconds later, the veggies went in.
Don’t Skimp On The Veg!
I love Isaan Der's pad thai because it has so much texture and crunch—thanks to a generous amount of bean sprouts, shredded carrot and scallions. Adding the veggies at the end also helps with the finished product, because the water they release loosens up the sauce a bit.
Did Chef Ko have to correct a couple of my wok mistakes? Absolutely: getting a thorough mix of ingredients from top to bottom requires a push-and-lift technique with the ladle while leaning the wok towards you that takes a while to get the hang of. But I took the pad thai home and fed it to my family: they were none the wiser, and asked for seconds.
Want to put Chef Ko's advice to good use? Here is our version of a quick pad thai with shrimp and chicken. (You may want to add the chicken a little earlier to let it cook through.)
The very best of Chatelaine straight to your inbox.
Chantal Braganza is a writer and editor living in Toronto. She is deputy editor, food at Chatelaine, a cookbook nerd, lover of vintage dish ware, and currently training for yoga teacher certification. Her first book, Story of Your Mother, is out with Strange Light Press.
