Chicken Keto Pad Thai Dinner Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is chicken Pad Thai made of? ›

What is Chicken Pad Thai Made of? This Thai street food dish is primarily made with small pieces of cooked chicken, eggs, rice, noodles, an assortment of veggies and seasonings. Then it's all tossed in a sweet and savory sauce. My sauce is made with ketchup, fish sauce, sugar, garlic, peanut butter, and lime.

The dish is mixed with a tamarind sauce and served with lime. The flavors of this dish are centered around a sweet-savory fusion. Salty, nutty, and with that slightly sweet sauce, it's a treat for tastebuds! Of course, every Pad Thai can be different.

Pad Thai Sauce is made with fish sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar and tamarind. Tamarind is the ingredient that is the heart and soul of Pad Thai sauce, giving the sauce the sour flavour that Pad Thai is known for. It's an ingredient used in South East Asian cooking, like this Malaysian Beef Rendang.

Instead, it's a nod to the American palate, introduced to the United States by Chinese immigrants who used “pad” as a catch-all term for any stir-fried noodle dish. Pad Thais can be both sour and sweet, depending on the region they're made in and who is making the dish!

The most common protein for Pad Thai is shrimp, but you can use chicken, tofu, pork, beef, or a combination of proteins.

The most traditional protein to use in pad Thai is shrimp, but pork, chicken, and beef are popular options as well. Eggs and tofu are usually incorporated as part of the basic stir-fry. Pad Thai is often not vegetarian even without meat, however, because of the fish sauce and/or dried shrimp used to make the sauce.

Four condiments are usually provided on the table: sugar, fish sauce, chili flakes, and sliced chilies in vinegar.

If it's only made of those ingredients, what then makes it so unique? A Pad Thai has tamarind, fish sauce, garlic, dried shrimp, palm sugar, and red chili pepper. These simple ingredients make Pad Thai a bowl of five tastes—salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.

A perfectly cooked pad Thai should have a balance of flavors — tangy, sweet, spicy and salty, Trang says. This comes from a blend of tamarind paste, palm sugar, crushed red chili peppers and fish sauce. Traditional pad Thai sauces follow a basic formula of a third each of palm sugar, tamarind paste and fish sauce.

Traditional pad thai sauce includes fish sauce, vinegar, sugar and tamarind paste. Tamarind paste is not easily found at a regular grocery stores so I substituted rice vinegar.

Do restaurants put ketchup in Pad Thai? ›

Thai Food and Travel and Hot Thai Kitchen say there are times American versions of pad Thai will also use paprika to make it red in an effort to make the dish more appealing to customers, but neither ketchup nor paprika are ingredients commonly found in Thai kitchens.

In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and 2 tablespoons cold water until smooth to make a slurry (see note). Whisk the slurry into the tamarind sauce and reduce the heat to low. Simmer, whisking continuously, for 2 minutes. As the cornstarch cooks, it will thicken up the sauce.

TAMARIND SUBSTITUTION

Although ketchup is a common replacement for tamarind paste, we prefer this tasty mixture: 1/4 cup (50 mL) tomato paste, 2 tbsp (30 mL) rice vinegar or freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice, 2 tbsp (30 mL) Worcestershire, 2 garlic cloves, minced, 1 tbsp (15 mL) brown sugar and 1 tbsp (15 mL) water.

Add enough sauce: In addition to having a great pad Thai sauce, it's important to get the sauce to noodle ratio just right. Because no matter how good your sauce is, if you don't add enough of it, you're going to end up with bland noodles. And there's nothing worse than a bland pad Thai.

Overcooked noodles are too soft...too soft noodles break into bits. This is why I stress so much that you should only cook pad thai in batches of 2 servings, and the most delicate fresh noodles should be cooked ONE portion at a time.

Best: Pad Thai

It's made from rice noodles sauteed with spices, peanuts, egg, and bean sprouts. Get it with shrimp, chicken, or tofu for lean protein, and extra veggies for fiber and vitamins. Just watch your portion: Pad thai clocks in at 300 to 400 calories a cup.

Thanks for the A2A. The main ingredients for Pad Thai are quite simple: yellow bean curds, prawns, eggs and flat rice noodles also called rice sticks (you can also use 'Bahn Pho' Vietnamese noodles as substitute). To make the Pad Thai sauce you need tamarind juice, palm sugar, fish sauce and some white vinegar.

Why is Pad Thai so popular? David Thompson says this dish hits all the flavour notes – sour, sweet, bitter, salty and umami. He says, “A good Pad Thai should be made with prawns and deep-fried shallots and when made well, it is damn delicious.”

Traditional Pad Thai usually combines tamarind paste, fish sauce, dried shrimp, and palm sugar, creating a sweet, sour, and salty taste balance. It commonly includes tofu, dried shrimp, bean sprouts, and peanuts. However, Americanized versions might swap tamarind for ketchup, making it sweeter and less complex.