Pad Thai Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is authentic Pad Thai sauce made of? ›

Pad Thai Sauce is made with fish sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar and tamarind. Tamarind is the ingredient that is the heart and soul of Pad Thai sauce, giving the sauce the sour flavour that Pad Thai is known for. It's an ingredient used in South East Asian cooking, like this Malaysian Beef Rendang.

The easiest thing to do is cook the sauce long enough for some of the water to evaporate. That may take a long time. You can take a couple of tablespoons of fat (lard, oil, butter), and sprinkle a couple tablespoons of flour and cook the flour into a rue, then add your sauce into that pan.

“Pad Thai is not a soup noodle, so keep it just wet enough where the sauce helps cook the noodle and just barely coats it but not so saucy that the noodles trip when you fork them up from the plate.”

If it's only made of those ingredients, what then makes it so unique? A Pad Thai has tamarind, fish sauce, garlic, dried shrimp, palm sugar, and red chili pepper. These simple ingredients make Pad Thai a bowl of five tastes—salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.

The dish is mixed with a tamarind sauce and served with lime. The flavors of this dish are centered around a sweet-savory fusion. Salty, nutty, and with that slightly sweet sauce, it's a treat for tastebuds! Of course, every Pad Thai can be different.

Overcooked noodles are too soft...too soft noodles break into bits. This is why I stress so much that you should only cook pad thai in batches of 2 servings, and the most delicate fresh noodles should be cooked ONE portion at a time.

TAMARIND SUBSTITUTION

Although ketchup is a common replacement for tamarind paste, we prefer this tasty mixture: 1/4 cup (50 mL) tomato paste, 2 tbsp (30 mL) rice vinegar or freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice, 2 tbsp (30 mL) Worcestershire, 2 garlic cloves, minced, 1 tbsp (15 mL) brown sugar and 1 tbsp (15 mL) water.

It can definitely be a part of a balanced, well-rounded diet. While pad thai includes many nutritious ingredients, its sodium content is considerably high. You can reduce its sodium by requesting the eatery go easy on the sauce and salt-contributing condiments.

Add enough sauce: In addition to having a great pad Thai sauce, it's important to get the sauce to noodle ratio just right. Because no matter how good your sauce is, if you don't add enough of it, you're going to end up with bland noodles. And there's nothing worse than a bland pad Thai.

They require extensive stir-frying to fully cook, leading to dry and sticky noodles. Boiling the noodles, on the other hand, leads to gummy strands that glue themselves together in the pot, resulting in a soggy, clumpy stir-fry and a whole lot of frustration.

How do you keep pad thai moist? ›

If they still aren't done, add water a tablespoon at a time to keep the pad thai moist while the noodles finish up. Add in the green onions and half of the peanuts when you're ready to serve, but continue mixing so they get warm. Serve as soon as you take the pad thai off the stove.

When it's sold in restaurants outside Thailand, the noodles are sometimes bright orange – that's because sauces or spices, like paprika, have been used instead of tamarind. Authentic Pad Thai is a light reddish-brown colour.

A good pad Thai hits three flavors in a very obvious fashion — sweet, salty, and sour. Sweet from palm sugar. Salty from fish sauce. Sour from tamarind.

An authentic pad thai sauce is actually very simple. There are technically only 3 ingredients: the sweet, the salty and the sour. But because we want this to be a time-saver, I've also add the shallots and the garlic into the sauce so we don't have to chop and sauté them on the day.

Pad thai is made with rice noodles, which are stir fried with eggs and chopped firm tofu, flavored with tamarind juice, fish sauce, dried shrimp, garlic, shallots, and sometimes red chili pepper and palm sugar, and served with lime wedges and often crushed roasted peanuts.

Authentic Pad Thai in Thailand is not red! Sometimes if they use a lot of Tamarind paste it can have somewhat of an orangish tinge. Many places that make Pad Thai especially in the States use Ketchup (disgusting) and that Pad Thai is red and taste nothing like authentic Pad Thai which is delicious!

It is usually a mixture of fish sauce (condiment made of fish), oyster sauce (made from oyster extract), brown sugar and tamarind (tree seed), but can also include shrimp, garlic, shallots or red chili pepper. Some establishments or chefs may use soy sauce, which is traditionally made by fermenting soybeans and wheat.

When it's sold in restaurants outside Thailand, the noodles are sometimes bright orange – that's because sauces or spices, like paprika, have been used instead of tamarind. Authentic Pad Thai is a light reddish-brown colour.