The Mystery of Pad Thai Sauce

Have you ever wonder if you need a Pad Thai sauce to make your delicious Pad Thai dish? Well, the answer is yes and no. For those who have never tasted it before, Pad Thai is a stir fry noodle with a unique taste which is a very popular Thai food abroad. For the sauce, it is nothing special but a pre-mix of key ingredients.

If you have a chance to visit Thailand, you will find out that it is hard to find such thing on sale anywhere. However, searching the internet, you will learn that a popular shopping site such as Amazon carries it on sale at a high price which could buy you 50 ready made dishes at the local price.

It doesn't mean that local Thais don't use it. For popular noodle shops where many customers are waiting at the same time, chef usually mixes ingredients in advance to save time and to basically quality control their taste. However, for smaller shop or home made, ingredients are usually mixed over the wok. That's the main reason why it is hard to find it on any local stores.

For the beginner, you will be better off pre-mixing the ingredients beforehand. The advantage is that you can taste it to see if the taste is right. The taste can be adjusted to perfection without any need to rush. To mix ingredients over the wok, you only have 1.5-2 minutes before the noodles are done. You can see that I will be hard for the beginner to adjust the taste over such a short period of time.

So now you decided that Pad Thai sauce is the way to go. Good news is that you don't have to spend your fortune to buy it. It is easy enough to make it yourself.

First, let's start with the original tastes. The recipe has 3 main tastes sour, salty, sweet, and spicy (which is scientifically not a taste). You can substitute any ingredient with ingredient that can be found in your area. It can be illustrated as follows:

1. Salty : Fish or Soy sauce or Soy, or even just salt
2. Sour : Tamarind paste or vinegar
3. Sweet : Palm sugar, Cane sugar, any sugar actually
4. Spicy (optional) : dry hot chili powder

You start with half a cup each of fish sauce, tamarind, and sugar. If you like it hot just add dry chili powder. However, do note that spice it is not really a mandatory, you can add hot dry chili later after the cook is done as well.

Mix all those ingredients together in a pot over a low heat oven. Taste and adjust the flavor balance until it is right for you. Continue to stir until it completely mixed. If you plan to keep it in the refrigerator, cook it until it boils. Otherwise, just stir them until they are completely mixed and you can start heating up the wok.