Rice is our main staple in the same as Westerners eat bread or potatoes. With rice we would normally eat vegetables, meats and any other ingredients we can find locally. Most of our vegetables are herbs and our food is very healthy. The taste of Thai food varies from region to region. The food from the South is generally spicier than the food from northern and central regions of the country. We eat cooked rice with most meals and always for dinner and breakfast, we will sometimes have noodle dishes for lunch and late night meals. Thai meals are normally made up of many dishes eaten with rice. Traditional Thai food is the kind of food you dip in and the kind of food that needs to be cooked with different methods, including: mix Thai dressed salad, boiled, pan roasted and then we started to eat food that is curried, fried, stir fried and steamed. These latter methods came about through the influence of China, India and Malaysia. Thai cuisine is based around five different tastes: sour, sweet, salty, bitter and spicy. The perfect Thai dish incorporates a delicate balance of all five tastes. Here are some of the different types of food we have:
Food eaten as a dip (Nam-Prik)
A lot of Thai food is dipped in a chilli paste, which we call “Nam-Prik”. We have many types of Nam-Prik with varying spice and a taste depending on the meat used and how much chilli you put on the paste. Examples of this dish are: Nam-Prik-Pla-Too (mackerel chilli paste), Nam-Prik-Ka-Pe (shrimp chilli paste), Nam-Prik-Pra (fish chilli paste, this kind of paste is made using freshwater fish), Nam-Prik-Oong (Thai northern-style pork and tomato relish) and Nam-Prik-Rong-Reua (sweet pork with a hot chilli sauce). To make this kind of food you only need to choose what meat you will use and put chilli, garlic then fermented fish (some chilli paste dishes don’t use fermented fish because some people don’t like the smell of it so we use fish sauce instead) with a little bit of sugar, fresh or dry chilli then all the ingredients will be beaten into a paste using a mortar, which is an essential tool in the Thai kitchen. The pastes are eaten with various meats along with vegetables that have been either grilled, boiled, steamed, fried or just eaten fresh. As with most dishes, we eat this with rice.
This picture shows Nam-Prik-Pla-Too (mackerel chilli paste). We love to eat this dish with fresh or cooked vegetables such as cucumber, water convolvulus (the vegetable pictured next to the bowl), runner beans, etc.
Mix Thai dressed salad (Yam and Som-tam)
This type of dish is very popular with Thai people. The most popular mixed, dressed salad is “Som-tam” which is very easy to find everywhere you go across the country. It is so popular and widespread because it’s easy to cook and the spiciness of it is actually refreshing in hot weather. The way to cook any Thai dressed salad is very easy; all you have to do is cook the meat of your choice (or you can have the dish without meat) then cut the fruit and vegetables (typically papaya) then season with fish sauce, lime juice, a little bit of sugar and fresh chilli. I love Thai salad (especially Som-tam). If you come to visit Thailand, do not forget to try it but, please, when you order it tell them not to make it too spicy because when you say spicy with Thai people they mean spicy as hell.
This picture shows “Som-Tam” or papaya salad in English. It’s a very popular dish for Thai people. We love to eat it with sticky rice, fried noodles or the vegetables such as cucumber, runner beans and water convolvulus.
Thai Soup (Tom)
Thai soup is not thick like western soup and is more of a broth. It is often eaten with food that is perhaps a little dry to help us swallow it more easily. Examples of Thai soup are: squash soup and Chinese cabbage soup which are both very light, we often have this kind of soup for breakfast because it’s not spicy. The most popular dish you can find in Thai restaurants around the world is “Tom-Yam-Kung”, which is shrimp soup, this is more of a spicy dish and can sometimes be very spicy. Tom-yam is our national dish and all the ingredients are home grown (nearly every household in the Thai countryside grow our own herbs and vegetables). To make Tom-Yam you need the meat of your choice, tom-yum chilli paste, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, fresh chilli (the chilli needs to pounded and cracked to make it more spicy), then add lime juice, fish sauce, a bit of sugar then taste and adjust it to suit your own taste.
The picture shows Tom-Yam-Kung, one of the most popular and well known Thai dishes. Tom-Yam is a spicy dish so we love to eat it with hot rice.
Thai curry dish (Kaeng)
Thai curry refers to dishes in Thai cuisine that are made with various types of curry paste; the term can also refer to the pastes themselves. Thai curry dishes are normally made from curry paste, coconut milk or water, the meat of your choice, vegetables or fruit and herbs. Thai curry mainly differs from the curries in Indian cuisine in their use of fresh ingredients such as herbs and aromatic leaves over a mix of spices. When you talk about Thai curry, most people will think of red or green curry, but in Thailand we have many curry dishes which we call “Kaeng”. For example, we have: Kaeng-Pla (fish curry), Kaeng-Paa (jungle curry), Kaeng-Hed (mushroom curry) and many more.
This picture shows “ Green curry” or Keang-Kheaw. Thai people love to have it with boiled rice or Thai vermicelli noodles (which you can see in the top right-hand side of the picture).
Roasted (Kua)
When I say roasted in terms of Thai food, I mean pan roasted (we don’t use ovens in our Thai cooking). This involves slowly pan roasting the meat or vegetables without oil or with very little oil. Many of these dishes will use coconut oil. For example, Pa-Nang is a dish that uses curry paste then adds coconut and slow cooks it until it is dry. Chu-Chee is known as the king of curry and is cooked with coconut and fried fish or pork, served with a spicy sauce that is slow cooked at a low heat.
This picture shows a dish called Kua-Kling, It’s a traditional dish from southern Thailand. It uses mincemeat that is slow cooked with chilli paste until the colour changes to yellow. We eat this dish with hot boiled rice and fresh vegetables.
Stir fry dish
Stir fries are always one of the main dishes that Thai families have to eat with their meal. Thai stir fries are different from Chinese stir fries. Thai stir fries use oyster and soya sauce as a main sauce and we always use fresh vegetable in our dishes. To do a stir fry dish very easily, you can just fry garlic, fresh chilli (if you don’t like spicy food the chilli is not essential), then you put in the meat of your choice then add all the vegetables you have and season it all with fish sauce, soya sauce or oyster sauce to suit your own taste.
This dish call “Pad-Ka-Na” or stir fried kale, you can find this dish in any restaurant in Thailand but very few Thai restaurants in the west serve it, I think that this is because the price of kale is very high, but in Thailand it is very cheap. We eat this with hot boiled rice.
Noodle dish (Guay-dtiow)
In Thailand our main staple is rice but we also have noodles. Noodles are mainly eaten for lunch or late at night and sometimes in the evening. If you come to visit Thailand you will see noodle restaurants everywhere. To order noodle dish you can ask for different kind of noodle you like such as rice noodles, vermicelli noodles, egg noodles and whatever other kinds of noodle that the restaurant has to offer and then you choose what meat you want to have with it.
This picture shows “Thai noodle soup”, it uses vermicelli noodles with beef, fresh bean sprouts, water convolvulus, sweet basil, Thai meatballs with spring onion on the top. This dish is readily available throughout Thailand. Also we have very famous noodle stir fry dishes such as Pad-Thai and Pad-Sea-Eaw.
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