Pad Thai lessons from Thailand, a slightly fuzzy origin story, plus a great recipe
and a how-to video to ensure your pad Thai prowess
Hello everyone!
I rarely order pad Thai in the States because the noodle dish tends to be overly sweet or bland. However, when I’m in Thailand, I eat it. I’ve enjoyed it in Sukothai in the early 1990s but more recently in Bangkok on my work trips for the Cooking Thai book project.
Pad Thai is ubiquitous in America, where there are currently over 6,800 Thai restaurants, according to Thailand’s Department of Foreign Trade. I’m not sure how restaurants are counted in Thailand but there are market vendors selling pad Thai, street food stalls selling it, as well as brick and mortar restaurants dedicated to the one dish. Lots of people cook, sell, and eat pad Thai.
In Thailand, I’ve enjoyed pad Thai poolside and had it as a to-go dish, neatly packaged with all the basic fixings that a local would require.
In-country pad Thai sometimes features pork and sometimes showcases shrimp. The flavors are always deeply savory, tangy, a touch spicy and never too sweet. There’s no ketchup or sriracha involved to stain the noodles a gaudy redish-orange. The sauce is flavored with tamarind, palm sugar, and fish sauce.
You add heat with toasted ground chile and other items, including condiments. It’s personalizable, customizable food. It’s very Thai, even though the dish includes Chinese culinary influences, which run deep in Thai cuisine and are expected, especially in noodle dishes.
Each time I eat pad Thai in Thailand, I gain new knowledge. Right now, I’m hanging out with chef friends like Pim Techamuanvivit and her pals so we eat and discuss cuisine and cooking. They’ve offered me insights like how pad Thai is efficiently cooked on a flat-top griddle! It’s mostly the purview of pro cooks who dedicate their careers to one dish.
When I came home this week from Bangkok, I wondered if I could produce a stellar version so that I wouldn’t long for it until my next trip back to Thailand.
Given that we’ve explored tamarind, tofu, and Singapore noodles, I thought it would be perfect for us to segue into pad Thai. It’s a stir-fried noodle dish that employs tamarind liquid and pan-fried tofu!
Wanting to honor the cuisine, I consulted cookbooks on my shelf from known experts. My research, kitchen trials and goofs resulted in these recipes for pad Thai plus a how-to video. At the end of three (3) trials, Rory said, “This tastes fantastic! It doesn’t taste like what we’ve had at many restaurants.”
Pad Thai popularity and origin
I’ve delved into the history of pho and origin of Singapore noodles to determine that they came about because of a series of loose circumstances. Pad Thai came about in a more purposeful way. In the late 1930s, Thailand was looking to boost morale, strengthen its economy, and curb consumption of rice during poor harvests due to flooding. As reported by Alexandra Domronchai in a Food and Wine article, Thailand was modernizing and prime minister Plaek Phibunsongkram (“Phibun”), a strident nationalist, wanted strategies to unify and promote Thai pride. Many countries in the region had lost their independence to colonial power.
Phibun had an interesting idea. Maybe a noodle dish would help achieve his goals?
Cooking competitions were held in schools, government agencies, and other nationalistic organizations to yield new noodle recipes, which included what became “pad Thai”, David Thompson wrote in Thai Street Food. In a 2009 issue of Gastronomica, Phibun’s son, Nitya Pibulsonggram, a former Thai Ambassador to the U.S. and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, recalled the noodle dish having been a family favorite; it may have been invented by a family cook or aunt.
Phibun and his government launched the “Noodle is Your Lunch” campaign and gave away noodle carts and recipes for pad Thai, which they deemed a new national dish. Note that during this time that Siam was renamed Thailand.
Pad Thai took off, especially as Thai-American relations grew in the 1960s and beyond when much of Southeast Asia was threatened by communism and instability. Thais immigrated to the U.S. and eventually, the Thai government initiated a gastrodiplomacy campaign to seed Thai food popularity all over the world via restaurants. Naturally, pad Thai was a key element of of the outward push of Thai flavors and culinary traditions.
No wonder pad Thai is on practically every overseas Thai restaurant menu. And because Thai restauranteurs abroad are into pleasing customers to meet financial bottom lines, they often compromise on flavor — taming and sweetening pad Thai, lowering the usage of fish sauce and leaving out the dried shrimp which are required to give the dish its deep savor.
I’ve tried to worm my way into Thai American restaurateurs’ hearts by asking for “old school” pad Thai. But it’s never worked well enough to yield the kind of superior flavors that I’ve had in Thailand. Maybe that will change someday as Thai restaurants abroad feel confident enough to make Thai food according to their tastes.
I could say the same for Vietnamese food. Much has been compromised for the sake of changing tastes in America. Vietnam never promoted pho as ‘Viet noodles’. But knowing the socio-political situation behind pad Thai in Thailand, a country that was never colonized, I wonder what what would have happened had Viet people united behind a noodle dish back in the 1930s and 40s.
Who knows but these are points to ponder as you’re cooking up pad Thai!
I’ve assembled the following to equip you to make fabulous pad Thai for yourself, family, and friends:
2 recipes: (1) a flexible, scaleable pad Thai seasoning sauce plus (2) the pad Thai recipe in full text and downloadable PDF.
Pointers for riffing and making a vegetarian or vegan version too (pad Thai is for everyone!)
Ingredient and prep tips on rice noodles, umami boosters, and accompaniments.
Make ahead notes so you can meal prep and riff
A video walk through to show you my mistakes so you won’t make them (or know you can recover)
Let’s make pad Thai!
