4 Levels of Pad Thai: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

hi i'm john and i'm a level one chef hi i'm natasha and i'm a level two chef hi i'm king i'm a chef instructor at the institute of culinary education i've been a professional chef for over 20 years i love pad thai and i order it all the time when i go to thai restaurants but i'm pretty new to making it so this is a bit of a challenge for me today i'll be making my version of pad thai which is vegetarian and that means that i'll be using a vegetarian fish sauce and a few meat alternatives my ideal pata is really touching on all those flavors salty sour sweet spicy and textures as well soft chewy crunchy to me kind of all comes together in this noodle dish [Music] first i'm gonna make the sauce so i'm doing a very simplified pare down version as you can see just a couple of ingredients very simple dump it all in mix it up call it a day brown sugar i'm gonna start with the palm sugar i try and dice this as fine as i can dice it's very funny cooking at the right height i'm on a box to make me the appropriate height soy sauce fish sauce i love fish sauce it's gonna add our saltiness and umami to the dish i'm vegetarian so my substitute version is a mix of vegetarian fish sauce and golden mountain seasoning here comes our sourness from the tamarind paste oyster sauce more umami rice vinegar chili garlic sauce beautiful and then i'm doing the juice of a lime it's already starting to smell like what you would smell in a pad thai dish so that gives me hope that that i'm getting this right smelling like pad thai i got everything in there i can smell that fish sauce i can smell the tamarind the palm sugar the oyster sauce and they're kind of all coming together there's the base for our pad thai now i'm going to start preparing my noodles the main ingredient to patai a stir-fry noodle dish are noodles every rice noodle packet has slightly different instructions no need to make up your own rules or deviate from the norm i have trouble opening packages for some reason okay i was like i'm gonna look silly pop them in a bowl i love how these look they're so cool completely submerge the noodles in cold water as they soften you can just continue to push them in so i'm gonna let these soak for about 10 to 20 minutes then i'll drain them and they should be ready to go and now our protein for my protein i'm going to be using tofu right now i'm going to cut the tofu into cubes and then i'll add some seasoning later we want everything to fit kind of in your chopstick or on your fork i cook it on the wok separately so it gets crispy and it won't break up when i mix it in with the noodles the tofu is all cut here's our diced tofu so i'm making a chicken pad thai and as you can see i have some boneless skinless chicken breasts here i'm going to cut them up into small bite-sized pieces tofu pad thai is okay i mean if you're vegetarian sure go for it but for me chicken always trumps tofu any day of the week and then liberally season them with salt and pepper and they'll be ready to go next up our sausage we're just gonna cut them on the bias meaning uh on a slight angle keeping them uniform i wish these prawns were alive but they're not basically we're gonna twist the head off i'm gonna take off the shell right now almost as if you were cleaning a shrimp we're doing the same method just these are just larger when you want to dive into a bowl of noodles you don't want a fork you don't want to peel anything just want to get in there dig into those noodles and go right into your mouth but we are going to keep one we're gonna keep this guy in deep frying we're gonna take uh this out here and now he's cold two things you could do here we can leave this hole like this i have a big mouth so i don't have a problem i could probably eat this in one shot it'll also cook well if it stays intact so my preference is to leave it whole i'm going to make a slice here that'll kind of keep it from curling up into a little ball the proteins are prepped and now we're going to move on to our additional ingredients so to go with my chicken i also have a bunch of veggies i'm going to chop my green onions garlic chives scallions nice and thin garlic shallots let's cut them in half my eyes probably should have done this last bean sprouts ready to go so no chopping there i'm going to julienne the carrot to my best ability i don't know if carrot is traditionally in pad thai but i like adding carrot because it's a little bit sweet so it complements the sweetness in the sauce and now for some red bell pepper doing just a pretty thin slice i wanted to have a little crunch but i also wanted to make it cook and not raw i'm going to chop the peanuts half of the peanuts will be cooked in with the pad thai and then half will be topping you just need to rough chop them so they're not all whole pickled radish i love cooking but for some reason i don't like opening cans do you want me to cook anything i'll cook your shoe i just can't open a can i'm doing it boom it's time to cook first up i'm going to drain these noodles these rice noodles are so easy to work with as you can see they're super pliable we're about to start cooking our pad thai this is how it should be when you're cooking you got to have everything in front of you ready to go use canola oil vegetable oil do not use olive oil that has a low smoking point will burn and we don't want that flavor in our food not in this dish garlic i like that i like that sound shallots our garlic and shallots are in the oil and you see that smoke coming out and you can see it's sauteing now you can't smell it not yet soon you will but i can smell it and already it smells like victory drop in a little peanut oil let that get nice and hot toss the chicken here i'm gonna saute the chicken three to five minutes make sure it's fully cooked through and then add in my veggies just gonna add this carefully to splatter and sprinkling just a little bit of salt over the tofu to season it so i'm going to crisp the tofu on all sides and then set it aside and then i'll prepare the noodles it's looking good starting to get golden i always feel impatient doing this part because i want to stir it but i need to just let it crisp and if i over stir it it breaks them when i first started eating tofu i didn't like it and that's because i didn't have it seasoned properly i really love tofu so the tofu is all done it's golden on all sides it's firmed up and it's pretty crispy our sausage is in there it's mixed with the garlic as that sausage is cooking it's rendering out the fat the fat is coming out of that sausage and now we have oil that's flavored with garlic with shallots and with pork we can eat this right here you can see it crisping already on the edge the sausage right that's a very good sign looking good smelling good feeling good i'm gonna go in with these prawns now it's talking to me feel that oil coming out the moisture hits the oil bang bang bang splash splash i'm gonna add fish sauce for our prawns you know we're gonna turn this guy to cook the other side let's get our tofu in there remember our tofu is cooked already it's not really cooking we're concerned about now we want to heat that through we want to get that the prawns cooked and we want to get that tofu heated through just going to put all my veggies in right on top of the chicken my bean sprouts red bell pepper now i'm just gonna let this cook through for a few minutes let the veggies get soft not too soft though i don't want the veggies overcooked once the red bell pepper starts to wilt that's the level of cooked that i want i'm going to add the shallots and garlic carrots chili flakes i'm mixing it and then cooking it until the garlic starts to brown slightly now let's talk about scallions we've got scallions in there let's get in our pickled radish in there oh i love it look at this already oh look at those colors wow i'm loving this look at the beans path put all the beer we'll get more later right i'm gonna scramble my eggs and then cook them right in the center beautiful and the egg cooks quick so you definitely want to move it around quickly in there and now that my egg is cooked i'm going to go ahead and incorporate it into the rest of the ingredients i want to make sure everything's nice and distributed really work that egg around the entire pan probably gonna use eight ounces of noodles but you can eyeball it that looks like a nice amount so almost all of it last but not least pad thai sauce tongs are your friends especially when working with noodles like these they're so thin i just want to make sure all that goodness that we cooked up just before gets really worked into the noodles the rice fill is great because it's so versatile it really soaks in all that great juice from the sauce so the garlic has cooked down a little bit i'm going to add the sauce and then the noodles this part you have to watch very carefully you want to make sure that the noodles absorb all of the sauce and this is where i'm gonna switch to tongs because it gets easier with the noodles we're only halfway through this thing i love it i love how it looks look at those colors everything's in there right you know who's not in there yet our noodles do you drain the noodles nah we don't need to drain the noodles it'll drain right in the pan and then leave some moisture in there put a little more oh now we're talking look at that temperature's rising now we're going to go in with our sauce fish sauce hold up fish sauce i probably said that a couple of times i love fish sauce fish sauce which is my favorite i love fish sauce fish sauce fish sauce fish sauce equals winner crack crack bang basically we're going to incorporate that egg in there i like how it's coming together look at that you know what it i'm looking for also are these pickles i love these pickles a little bit of sour in there right we're almost there but we still have to cook this prawn and we're not going to throw them in there so we're going to deep fry this prawn we have our oil hot at about 350. i'm just going to coat it with a little wandra flour we're going in basically that prawn is being covered by that hot oil look at that prawn we are almost there j for jumbo that's a big ass prawn another way i could tell it's almost done the sizzling has reduced meaning that the moisture is out not all the moisture but most of that moisture is out it's telling me he's like king i'm done don't forget about me don't overcook me and i do not want to overcook you baby let me get you out of there now i'm just going to season it with a little salt get it while it's hot and that's all it is to it deep-fried prawn ready for our patai so i'm gonna push the noodles to the side up onto the wall of the wok and then i'm gonna let the eggs fry scramble them a little bit here then i'm putting the noodles on top of the eggs like this stir it all together add in the garlic chives bean sprouts and then half of the peanuts the second half of peanuts will be used as a garnish at the end so with the residual heat just fold the noodles in with the bean sprouts so the bean sprouts can cook i'm going to make an omelet and we're going to put our pot thai into our omelet i'm going to season with our fish sauce think of it as a liquid salt with a lot more punch in it oh kata looks amazing here's our patai and are wrapped in our beautiful egg on top of a banana leaf there's some oil with the omelette so this will pick up some of that oil it's just a nice backdrop to have in here and it reminds me of thailand you know there's our pad thai we're still not done yet so now it's time to plate this up i'm sure there's like some chefy way to get them out i don't know what it is oh maybe it's that looks pretty make sure to get tofu because tofu is my favorite rip some fresh cilantro oh my gosh smells so good let's start with some chili flakes here some pickled jalapenos fresh serranos fresh chilies in there right scallions in there we're gonna go right over the top on the peanuts just on the side and just to make it pretty i'll nestle some tofu right and then one lime wedge on the side squeeze it right over oh my god gorgeous drizzle a little bit on this here and we just put this baby right there just like that that's the pad thai this is what i'm talking about our pad thai is done this is my pad thai this is my pad thai and this is my pad thai now it's time to taste bottom's up oh my god it was so good i actually tasted bad thai it's delicious for a simple modified version of pad thai very happy with how this came out i like having this dish when i know i'm going to be drinking and i like having it when i'm hungover as well everything is in there i get sweetness from the sausage i get the heat from the fresh chilies the pickled jalapenos that tofu's in there really that's what the magic of pattayas is there's so many flavors and elements and textures going on i don't even get to the crispy fried prawn look here we go cut this bad boy up oh look at that there's some of that oh my goodness pad thai baby pad thai is a plate of everything that's delicious and satisfying it's carbohydrate rich with proteins and vegetables and has layers and layers of flavor sweet salty sour and savory all of our chefs used rice noodles which are traditional for pad thai rice noodles are made by soaking rice in water grinding it to a paste and partially cooking it so that some gelatinization or starch swelling takes place it's needed to form a dough and then stretched and extruded to form long noodles these noodles are steamed cooled and dried for at least 12 hours in hot air or quickly flash fried in hot oil the steaming and drying process causes partial retrogradation which means that the amylose and other starches connect and realign to form a matrix that can withstand reconstitution in hot water noodle size is an important choice when making pad thai john used very thin vermicelli noodles in his dish much thinner than the flat rice noodles in kings and natashas john's noodles rehydrated and cooked more quickly because of their smaller diameter but natasha and king's thicker noodles were able to absorb more sauce while cooking thanks to their increased surface area it's pretty darn close natasha made a vegetarian pad thai and her main protein was tofu tofu is made by soaking grinding and cooking soybeans soybeans contain trips and inhibitors these are naturally occurring compounds that interfere with gastric digestion by briefly cooking tofu during processing trypsin inhibitors become inactive natasha used firm tofu which is further processed by pressing to remove excess water and holds up well to frying king used tofu in his dish as well but also added large shrimp or prawns and chinese sausage chinese sausage is a hard sausage that varies from region to region but is often pork-based smoked and seasoned with soy sauce chili powder and sodium nitrites the sodium nitrites give the sausage a reddish color which is persistent even after it's cooked because the nitrate forms nitrosal hemochrome a pinkish pigment that is heat stable if you don't love sausage i don't love you all three of our chefs added scrambled eggs to their pad thai the eggs not only add protein and richness to the dish they also help thicken the sauce this is thanks to phosphatidylcholine a phospholipid emulsifier found in the yolk john's sauce included fish sauce and rice vinegar fish sauce is full of umami that savory mouth-filling quality associated with glutamic acid and glutamate in foods it's full of complex flavor with fruity buttery roasted malty and meaty notes to make fish sauce fish are gutted highly salted and left to ferment for 6 to 12 months the enzymes in the fish that help create flavor compounds also start browning reactions this is why fish sauces tend to be so dark the fish disintegrate and become liquid during fermentation rice vinegar is made with mold yeast and bacterial cultures that convert substrates to amino acids and other organic acids adding flavor to the vinegar natasha's sauce included palm sugar for sweetness and vegetarian fish sauce for savory umami palm sugar is from the asian sugar palm tree the sap is collected and boiled down to a sugar syrup or crystallized it has a distinctive taste with some flavor compounds in common with wine vegetarian fish sauce obviously doesn't include fish instead it's made from ingredients like mushrooms fermented coconut soy date or palm set the ingredients are boiled in an acid solution to hydrolyze or break apart proteins through chemical reactions with water into free amino acids which impart a savory quality to the sauce king sauce included tamarind and oyster sauce tamarind is a brown fruit pod with an intensely sour sweet flavor profile tamarind paste is made from the sticky fibrous sour pulp that surrounds the seeds in the pod tartaric acid is one of the main components that contributes to the sour flavor next time you're in the mood for some delicious and satisfying pad thai we hope you'll use some of these tips from our three inspired chefs

Channel: Epicurious

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Keywords: 4 levels, pad thai, 4 levels pad thai, pad thai recipe, authentic pad thai, expert pad thai, easy pad thai, homemade pad thai, make pad thai, how to make pad thai, real pad thai, restaurant pad thai, spicy pad thai, pad tai, pad thai sauce, thai noodles, thai stir fry noodles, how to make thai noodles, thai noodle recipe, make thai noodles, thai food, thailand food, thailand pad thai, epicurious pad thai, epicurious 4 levels, epi 4 levels, four levels, epi, epicurious

Id: eTFMY0FU4Os

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020