How to Make Thai Food at Home: Everyday Pad Thai and Panang Beef Curry

[Music] today on america's desk kitchen bridget and julia unlock the secrets to the ultimate pad thai jack challenges bridget to a tasting of coconut milk lisa tests electric kettles and l makes julia fool proof penang beef curry it's all coming up right here on america's test kitchen [Music] in the 1930s the dish pad thai had a great impact on the identity of thailand the public welfare department started a bai thai campaign now along with the basic recipe for pad thai the slogan noodle as your lunch was introduced now julie and i do not need to be convinced to eat pad thai but making it a home can be a challenge so we're going to show you how to make pad thai noodles for lunch and dinner maybe a snack oh definitely a snack sounds good pad thai is very easy to make nothing's very difficult there are a lot of little ingredients so with our recipes we focused on one making it easily accessible to the american pantry and two who wanted to serve four people we're gonna start by making a condiment that we're gonna serve with our pad thai and this is a third of a cup of white vinegar we're gonna add a little bit of spice this is a serrano chili i'm just going to slice it into very thin pieces i'm going to go all the way to the stem and we're just going to put these slices right into the vinegar all right moving on we're going to start with preserved daikon radish it adds sort of a pickley flavor it's a little bit of heat in the daikon i couldn't find it really hard to find in a normal supermarket so we're going to make our own pickled radish just using radishes it makes sense right and so here i have a quarter cup of water and i dissolved already half a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter teaspoon salt in the microwave took about 30 seconds and now i'm going to cut up some radish into nice sticks and to do that you just want to slice the radish lengthwise and then you can just slice the slices into nice matchsticks yeah sometimes you can find daikon that's fresh at your supermarket it's also called japanese radish often but it can be a little tricky to find sometimes so just regular radishes it's always a sherbet all right so right into this little brine i made now these radishes are going to sit in here for about another 15 minutes then we're going to take them out and pat them dry we'll toss them into the pad thai at the very end sounds great set those aside moving on to the sauce this is the real deal this is the heart of pad thai this is a quarter cup of fish sauce into it i'm gonna add three tablespoons of sugar and three tablespoons of an ingredient we couldn't substitute now this is tamarind and tamarind has a very sort of raisiny sour tangy flavor you can buy it in different forms but we liked tamarind concentrate three tablespoons and the flavor is really just iconic to pad thai it's kind of the perfect fruit in terms of sweet and sour balance all in one all right so we're just gonna whisk this together until the sugar dissolves sounds good now a little bit more about tamarind i remember when you can buy tamarind at a supermarket now you can find it in many different forms this is what fresh tamarind looks like it's a pod and inside it has a very flavorful pulp this is the pulp that's been concentrated into a very thick paste both of these are very flavorful but they need to be reconstituted a lot in order to use for pad thai you can also find tamarind in powdered form but it's a little too weak for our palette so we love the ready to use concentrate which is what julia's using today it's ready to use right out of the package big flavor you do want to make sure to find on the package the words product of thailand or manufactured in thailand this is your best bet all right so on to odd ingredient number two dried shrimp so in thailand what they do is they take these tiny dried shellfish they peel them they salt them and they let them dry in the sun and the flavor they add is really distinct and very authentic but they're really hard to find so we're gonna make our own okay so here i have four shrimp and i've already peeled them completely and deveined them and we're gonna cut them into small pieces cut them through the middle almost like butterflying ones all the way through so that they're nice and thin and then we're gonna take them we're just gonna cut them into about half inch pieces i'm gonna take all this chopped shrimp toss it with eighth of a teaspoon sugar eighth of a teaspoon salt gonna stir this around and we tried drying it in a skillet it took about 20 minutes which was much too long and we found it much easier to dry them in the microwave before you put in the microwave you want to spread them out it's making sure none of these shrimp are really touching each other because as they start to dry they turn into little gluey bits yeah we're finding out that the microwave does more and more we're actually toasting coconut in the microwave the perfect way to do that toasting nuts and now we're drying shrimp what can't it do it's a miracle all right so into the microwave they go again 50 power for a couple minutes until they reduce their size by about half and they're very dry oh these look perfect all right so these were in the microwave for just a few minutes and you can see they're about half their size this is so clever and doing this adds such an incredible depth of flavor to the finished pad thai and it's so easy salty and chewy you love it all right so we're going to set these over here now time for the main ingredient the rice noodles so this is eight ounces of dried rice noodles and these are the thick ones they're about a quarter of an inch thick the best way to rehydrate them is to use boiling water it's about six cups of boiling water we're just gonna let them sit there for about eight minutes and i'm gonna give them a gentle toss every few minutes to make sure they're not sticking together and just until they're nice and soft and pliable all right bridget so these noodles have been soaking for about eight minutes and you can see they're nice and soft but they're not mushy yet because remember we still have to cook them a little bit with the sauce and the other ingredients in the skillet you can see i'm pulling on it a little bit stretchable it's not breaking all right so now it's time to drain these guys we also want to give them a good rinse both to cool them down and help prevent them from sticking to one another washes away some of that starch and really rinse them well all right those look pretty good they're nicely rinsed now i'm gonna toss lightly with two teaspoons of oil prevent them from sticking together as they sit and wait their turn in the skillet all right put these back in the bowl there you go noodles and we are ready to start cooking so we're going to start by adding two teaspoons of vegetable oil and i have to say putting your vegetable oil in a container like this very handy especially with stir fries when you're adding little bits of oil at a time we like a skillet because it has a nice flat bottom a lot of surface area works well for stir fries and pad thai so that oil is just shimmering i'm gonna start with our dried shrimp we're gonna cook these for about three minutes until they turn about golden brown you just want to give them a stir every now and again make sure they're not getting too golden on one side oh you can see they're nicely golden all the way around and now we're gonna start to build our pad thai rather than build it in the skillet which has limited surface area our aha moment for making enough pad thai for four people is building in a bowl into the skillet we're gonna add another teaspoon of oil now we're gonna add a little garlic and some scallions now traditional recipes use a combination of shallot and garlic chives garlic chives really lovely hard to find unless it's the height of summer around here so we're going to substitute both scallion whites and scallion greens so this was four scallions i separated the whites and minced them and to this we're going to add one clove of garlic we're just going to cook this in the pan for about a minute that looks pretty good so here i'm going to take the pan off the heat scrape this into the bowl with the dried shrimp and you want to make sure to get this all out because any bits left will really start to burn two more teaspoons of oil we're going to crank the heat up to high and now we're going to add some shrimp so traditionally there are three proteins in pad thai tofu eggs and shrimp for this recipe we wanted to make it a little easier we jettisoned the tofu we kept the shrimp and the eggs it's a pound of shrimp total but minus the four shrimp that we used earlier to make our own dried shrimp let them cook for about three minutes until they turn opaque and are slightly browned around the edges of course we'll flip them over halfway through these shrimp look pretty well cooked you can see they're nicely browned on both sides and it only took about three minutes very gorgeous now we're actually going to add the eggs right to the pan with the shrimp cleared a little area in the center of the pan two more teaspoons of oil go right in the center in go the eggs now this is four large eggs that i beat together you want to stir them around just want to cook them for about 30 seconds or so into the bowl okay now back in the skillet two more teaspoons of oil again we're still over high heat we're gonna add the drained rinsed noodles and the sauce we're just going to cook this three minutes or so until most of the sauce is absorbed into those noodles right so these noodles are nicely cooked they're warmed through all that sauce has been absorbed and it's goten yay so into the bowl go all those noodles to this we're gonna add a little bit of our vinegar that we're also gonna serve with we're gonna add two teaspoons now we're gonna add the scallion greens remember we added the scallion whites earlier and that's replacing those garlic chives here are drained and patted dry pickled radish last but not least two cups of bean sprouts nice little bit of crunch right now we're just going to toss this all together i wish you guys could be here because what i'm smelling is amazing all this freshness in there a little bit of pickle and of course the fish sauce amazing all right so we're going to put this onto a nice big family-style platter it serves more than two it does thank goodness right and it's not done until we finish with a few roasted but unsalted peanuts it's about a quarter cup lightly chopped i'm just gonna platter you up a whole big pile some shrimp some of that egg a little bit of vinegar yes all right a couple of chilies might fall in there perfect let me give you a lime wedge or two let's take a moment to drink this in shall we this is light and fresh and clean tasting everything is perfectly cooked the egg is not dried out it's actually still nice and moist and the shrimp not rubbery at all it's perfect and i love getting those little bits of dried shrimp in there i tell you what they are the bacon of the crustacean world so our outstanding pad thai recipe well it starts with a homemade sauce use the microwave to turn fresh shrimp into dry and then soak and drain rice noodles stir-fry in batches toss with homemade toppings and then finish with peanuts so from america's test kitchen to your kitchen noodles are now your lunch or maybe dinner or anytime with our everyday pad thai it's incredible isn't it [Music] kettles are handy for making coffee and tea but they're also great for any cooking task that calls for boiling water like rehydrating dried mushrooms or softening lasagna noodles we tested 10 electric kettles priced from 33 to 100 we timed how long they took to boil how precisely they poured and how comfortable and safe they felt to handle we even did a blind tasting of the boiled water checking for off flavors and we boiled them over and over our favorites went through 365 rounds that's daily use for a year they all shared some good features first they're all cordless so only the base plugs in and they can all go on the base in any direction so they're easy to pick up and put down and finally they all shut off automatically beyond that some of these kettles are not so great when you feel a kettle and it's hard to see inside that's a pain we really hated peering at little windows or tiny lines inside the kettles or extra gauges we love the glass kettles because you got instant visibility for filling and boiling and for feeling secure a few of these had problems this crops model rocks on its base and it never quite feels like you put it down right and the lid flips back so fast it flicks hot water on you now the best ones like this oxo open slowly and easily and they feel well controlled even when you're pouring from a full boiling kettle we also liked wide openings like this so we could get in and clean and finally speed and capacity were critical factors in this lineup boiling a quart of water took anywhere from four and a half to six and a half minutes now that's faster than the nine minutes it took in a covered saucepan on the stove but our two favorites were among the fastest they took less than five minutes our top choice is this one it's the oxo on clarity cordless glass electric kettle for 79.95 it holds 60 ounces of water if you need a lot in a hurry for a slightly smaller kettle that performs just as well the 48 ounce capresso silver h2o electric kettle at 56 dollars is our best buy the average coconut will yield about three cups of coconut milk but since it's a lot easier to open a can than a coconut jack is here to tell us which brand of canned coconut milk is best so i promise you don't have to drink three cups of coconut milk thank you what you see here is straight from the can we stirred them back together because there's both the solid fat coconut cream and the liquid we did some other tests where we made coconut rice pudding we made a beautiful thai coconut soup with chicken you're getting this straight up so thanks jack yeah so start tasting couple things i want you to look for okay when it came to flavor what we really want is something kind of in the middle of the road there were some brands that had no coconut flavor whatsoever and then others where you feel like oh i'm drinking suntan lotion i hope i can identify those yeah so one of the big factors is the amount of fat and i brought some little samples here the people we work with come up with the craziest tests and they said well let's figure out how we can figure out how much liquid and how much solids every can so we took a church key can opener to the bottom let the liquid drain out then we open the top very small and what you see here there's a lot of liquid it's kind of a weird gray color and then this basically looks like the cranberry jello that you would get out of the can so has the ridges it's very solid fat this is from our winner there's a lot less liquid it's not separated and the cream is soft and billowy and the reason why this is a big deal is when we started making soup we got kind of separated coconut milk which is not very nice so i interrupted your enjoyment of coconut milk when you crack open a fresh coconut the liquid that comes out that's the coconut water that is being sold you know in those cartons and is oh so popular i feel like coconut has a great pr agent along with kale that's true coconut milk what they do is they shred the fresh coconut they then add some water and this is where you can get more or less water in the final product and then they squeeze out the liquid that comes from the shredded coconut and the water and if they add too much water during that process yes they get more yield but we get less flavor and we get a thin texture the other thing that's a really big factor here we actually found a coconut expert at a university in thailand i wish i was a coconut expert in thailand a professor dr t as we referred to him told us that young coconuts have less fat and so the more mature the coconut the more fat and the more flavor that you're going to get in the can kind of like humans anything that you're noticing in these four samples this one i can't find any coconut flavor at all in fact it actually tastes like the can to me more than coconut milk this one is quite nice i like it because it's a little bit sweet okay either of these two i actually quite like this one is my favorite it's a little bit sweeter this one is oh maybe not going back and forth actually i like that one better okay so i'm gonna say that this one is my favorite this one's the runner up and these these two can just go away all right so this is the final decision you've locked in i think so can i phone a friend i'm a friend there you go but i'm not going to give you any more hints all right so start with what i think is the winner yeah all right this was in the middle of the pack wrong with me this was a good one but it wasn't the best it had nice level of fat and a nice flavor but our tasters kind of agreed with your first instinct so if you want to go and i was like oh she had locked in and then she locked it out we have problems with the ones on the end though that was at the bottom of the rankings that's taster tie it was actually not recommended we had a lot of problems when we made soup with that it had no flavor and also kind of separated on us yeah it's kind of a why bother this is kame this is also down towards the bottom of the rankings we just felt like it did not perform as well as our top choice well there you go you don't have to crack open coconuts yourself just go out and buy our winner it's the arroyo d coconut milk it's 99 cents for 14 ounces the three most popular dishes at a thai restaurant are pad thai the rice noodle dish tom kagai that chicken soup with coconut milk and lemongrass and penang beef curry today ella is here to give penang beef curry a test kitchen treatment that's right savory thai curries are often categorized by the paste that gives them flavor and thickness so we have green and hot we have yellow and sweet and then we have penang which is a sweeter version of red curry it's my favorite i'm in great so we have here two pounds of beef in the test kitchen we tried this recipe with chuck roast beef shank and brisket and at the end of the day we found that boneless short rib was the way to go keeping with tradition i'm gonna cut this piece into three equal parts and then we're going to cut it a quarter of an inch against the grain and when cutting meat this thinly it helps if the meat's very cold that way it's easier to slice through okay so i'm going to add this to a large saucepan and cover it with water the key to getting the desired tenderness that's necessary for this dish is first bringing it to a boil i'm going to put it on high and let it reach a boil once it has i'll cover it turn it down to low and let it cook for hour to hour and a quarter all right so our beef's been simmering for over an hour i think it's ready oh it smells beefy it does smell beefy so i'm gonna just do a check you'll know that it's ready when it's fork tender look at that the fork just slides right in right through and so this sim ring not only made the beef tender but it also actually mellowed out the flavor of the beef the tempering of the beef is super important because in this dish the beef should accentuate the curry not the other way around all right so in the pan we have two tablespoons of vegetable oil and we have two tablespoons of red curry paste now a lot of recipes i know start with coconut milk in the pan and they cook that coconut milk down until it cracks and all the fat comes out but we're not doing that here no we found that vegetable oil gives us the most consistent results and we're very happy with that we're gonna just let this cook for about five to eight minutes and we'll know that it's ready when it starts to turn dark red and you'll start smelling a nice peppery aroma all right okay so this has been cooking for about eight minutes as you can see it's dark and red it looks quite different than it did when we started to that we're gonna add one can of coconut milk and just kind of give it a stir to break it up oh man that's starting to look good to this i'm gonna add four teaspoons of fish sauce and two teaspoons of sugar the fish sauce and the sugar gives that amazing salt and sweet flavor that is very signature in thai food i'm also gonna add a thai chili pepper which i've have and this is optional and i'm also opting in for two more tablespoons of red curry paste because i definitely have a desire for fire those are some of my favorite flavors i like words coconut milk and the spice all right so we're just going to make sure that we get that sugar dissolved in the mixture so just kind of make sure it doesn't feel gritty on the bottom of the pan i'm finally going to add this nice tender beef that we let cook for an hour starting to take shape yes make sure all the pieces of meat get covered we just have to let it simmer until it's thickened and reduced by half all right so this has been simmering for 12 to 15 minutes it smells amazing so to finish it off i have here six kaffir lime leaves that i've taken the vein out of and sliced thinly and i'm gonna just let these cook for about one to two minutes all right so kefir lime leaves also known as macro lime leaves infuse a unique tangy floral flavor to traditional southeast asian dishes now unlike a bay leaf which they look like you can actually eat them and now these leaves are readily available in asian markets and they freeze well but if you can't find them a combination of lemon zest and lime zest will approximate their flavor all right so we've given the kefir lime leaves a couple minutes i think they have kicked our dish up like a whole bunch of notches it smells amazing it does and it's eating ready yes time to eat let me just serve it up that sauce is so pretty and creamy and you can still smell the good spiciness of the red curry paste i'm just going to add these chopped peanuts it's a third cup you've been so gracious i'm going to serve you i've been quite patient because this smells so good oh that looks delicious you know it tastes even better than it smells i was a little skeptical about the kaffir lime these at first because we don't eat bay leaves but this delicious citrusy flavor that it has it kind of cuts the heat a little bit now as you mentioned earlier the beef isn't supposed to have a huge presence here supposed to be beefy but it's really all about that sauce it is i'm so glad i can make this at home now to make this flavor packed thai classic start by simmering slices of boneless beef short ribs in water fry thai red curry paste in a little oil stirring coconut milk fish sauce sugar and fresh chili finish with kefir lime leaves and peanuts and there you have it from our test kitchen to your kitchen perfect penang beef curry you can get this recipe and all the recipes from the season along with our tastings testings and select episodes at our website americastestkitchen.com thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 313,492

Keywords: thai food, thai cooking, pad thai, pad thai recipe, curry, beef curry recipe, beef curry, thai recipes, coconut milk, recipe, learn to cook, america's test kitchen, equipment review, electric kettles, kitchen equipment, cooking thai food, how to make pad thai

Id: BckyrcymtUk

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019