When talking about Thai food with foreigners most of them consider Pad Thai as their favourite. One friend always asks me when I will show her how to make it. Today I will introduce my simple sauce that I always have at home. The sauce I am going to show you is not only used for Pad Thai, as this sauce base can create many different dishes.

Basic Sauce

Ingredients
• 1/3 cup fish sauce, to taste
• 1/2 cup tamarind pulp concentrate , to taste
• 3/4 cup palm sugar, to taste
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup water

Method

1. Put all the sauce in a sauce pan and gently bring it to the boil. Simmer until the liquid is reduced to 1/3 of the pot. Taste and adjust to ensure the balance of 3 favours (sweetness, saltiness and sour)
2 . Let it cool then store in a sterile jar and keep in the fridge until required. This can keep up to month.

Making Pad Thai Sauce

Big servings of Pad Thai are unusual, because getting the flavour right is easier when cooking just 1-2 serves per time. To make the sauce for 1-2 serves you will need
• 4-5 tbsp of the basic sauce from above
• 1 tbsp of oyster sauce.

 

That’s all. How simple is that? I only mix with the oyster sauce just before cooking Pad Thai because you can use the basic sauce to do something else if you prefer. Examples are;

Dipping sauce (น้ำจิ้ม)) for steak or grilled chicken

• 4 tbsp basic sauce
• ground chilli to your preferred heat level
• 1/2 tbs Ground roasted rice
• chopped spring onion or/and corinedar

Then taste test! This is how Thai cuisine works, it is all about the balance.

Making a sweet fish sauce (น้ำปลาหวาน) to serve with green mango or grilled cat fish and bitter vegetable.

• 4 tbsp basic sauce
Add deep fried dried chilli, deep fried onion and deep fried garlic.

Another choice is using this basic sauce with deep fried boiled eggs.

Next time I will show you how to make Pad Thai. I hope you have the sauce ready 🙂