Yes! You can make restaurant-worthy pad Thai at home. It's not at all hard—it just takes a little strategic planning. This one is adapted from Chef Peter of 1001 Thai in Easton, PA.

What Is Pad Thai?

Pad Thai is a popular rice noodle dish that is on the menu of nearly every Thai restaurant. It is indeed served in Thailand, usually with tofu. “This is like McDonald’s” for Thai people, says Peter, with a laugh. Which is to say it’s fast food; he says in Thailand it’s street food that cooks quickly in a very hot wok or pan.

Pad Thai is often served with chopped peanuts, bean sprouts, scallions, and sometimes carrots, cilantro and/or a wedge of lime. The sauce is key and is comprised of sugar, fish sauce, rice vinegar, and tamarind.

Pad Thai is Fast Food. Literally.

The only tricks, if there are any, have to do with timing. The actual dish itself takes less than 10 minutes to get to the table, which continued to surprise me, even as I was working on this recipe multiple times. All of a sudden, it’s ready! The key is to have your ingredients prepped and ready—and the table set for dinner.

Cooking Pad Thai at Home

Pad Thai is also typically made one serving at a time—but the average home cook isn’t going to want to repeat this procedure multiple times for every guest at their table.

This recipe serves four, and I highly recommend making it in two batches. The first time I made pad Thai following Peter’s recipe, that is what I did to serve myself and my two boys, and that seemed workable.

Each batch of the pad Thai comes together very fast, so you could either serve a little bit of the first round to those who are waiting, or you could just wait and serve it all together. Personally, I am always a proponent of serving hot food when it’s hot, and Asian restaurants will often bring you food when it’s ready, not necessarily to time it with everyone else’s orders.

RECIPE

How to Make Pad Thai

COOK TIME 10 mins

TOTAL TIME 10 mins

SERVINGS 4 servings

NOTE : COOK THIS RECIPE IN TWO BATCHES. I had the best results with this dish when I made it in two batches. I cooked half the eggs, half the shrimp, half the noodles, and so forth, and then repeated the process. It’s much easier to manage the ingredients in the wok this way, and it more closely mimics the way pad Thai is prepared, which is one dish at a time.

Ingredients

For the pad Thai:

·       1 (14-ounce) package flat, wide rice noodles

·       6 to 8 tablespoons fish sauce

·       3/4 cup rice vinegar

·       1 to 2 teaspoons tamarind paste (also sometimes called concentrate)

·       1 cup granulated sugar

·       Pinch paprika (or cayenne powder)

·       10 to 12 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil, divided

·       4 large eggs

·       1 pound shrimp, peeled, deveined, and defrosted

·       1/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped roughly

·       1 cup bean sprouts

For garnish (optional):

·       1 lime, cut into quarters

·       2 tablespoons roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped roughly

·       Chopped cilantro, for garnish

·       Red pepper flakes, for garnish

Method

1. Soak the rice noodles:

In a large container, preferably one with a lid, soak the noodles in cold water, enough to cover so that no noodle is poking out. Soak for at least 2 hours, or up to 12 hours. (You can soak for longer, but the noodles have a tendency to break apart more easily during cooking.) It can be refrigerated, or not—it doesn’t matter.

2. Make the sauce:

In a shallow bowl, whisk together the fish sauce, vinegar, tamarind concentrate, and sugar until smooth. Taste. Adjust the sauce as needed. Add a pinch of paprika or cayenne powder for color.

3. Bring a large pot of water to boil

4. Divide all of your ingredients into two batches:

Arrange them near your stove. You’ll prepare each batch completely, one after the next.

Working One Batch at a Time:

1. Cook the eggs:

Heat a wok or other large pan with high sides over high heat, which you will maintain throughout cooking the pad Thai. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil. When the oil starts to shimmer a bit, it’s ready.

Crack the eggs for this batch into the pan and, using the tip of a wooden spoon, gently loosen and break the yolk. You want to have enough oil in the pan so it looks as though the egg is floating, or suspended, in the oil. This gives you more surface area to cook the egg without it burning or turning it into scrambled eggs.

Gently shake and flip the egg around in the pan. Break it up a bit with the spoon, but don’t scramble it by any means. This should take about a minute.

2. Cook the shrimp:

Add 1 to 2 more tablespoons of oil to the pan if the pan seems too dry, and add the shrimp for this batch. Toss them gently in the pan and move them around with the wooden spoon to get some color on them, about a minute.

3. Soften the noodles:

Take several handfuls of your noodles (about half the total amount) out of the water they’re soaking in, and transfer to a fine mesh sieve. Hold the sieve over the pot of hot water and gently dip the noodles up and down, in and out of the water, to soften them but not cook per se. (Using the sieve saves you from having to cook it and then strain it, enables you to use the pot of water more than once, and it makes the whole process move more quickly.)

Shake out the excess hot water and taste to make sure the noodles have softened but still have a little give to them.

4. Add the noodles to the pan:

Transfer the noodles to the hot pan with the shrimp. Keep the noodles long; don’t chop them up in the pan (long noodles mean long life, Chef Peter says). Taste to make sure they have softened; the noodles don’t need to be completely cooked at this point because they will continue to cook in the wok.

Toss them gently in the pan and stir them briefly to keep them from sticking together. When the noodles look shiny, it’s time for the sauce.

5. Add the sauce:

Quickly whisk the sauce if the sugar seems to have settled, and add about 1/4 cup to the pan. Gently toss and flip the noodles in the pan.

Again, stir them quickly to integrate the sauce; when you can’t see any more sauce in the pan, you'll know it's ready and that the noodles have absorbed the sauce.

6. Add the peanuts and bean sprouts:

Add the peanuts and the sprouts, and toss all ingredients together quickly. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes until everything is heated through. The noodles will soften and look more translucent.

7. Taste and serve:

Turn the heat off the pan and taste to make sure there is enough sauce to flavor the dish. Serve immediately in individual bowls with wedges of lime, additional peanuts, chopped cilantro, and/or chili flakes, if desired.

8. Repeat steps 5 through 11 for making the second batch of pad Thai

		NUTRITION FACTS(PER SERVING)
796	CALORIES
43g	FAT
80g	CARBS
24g	PROTEIN