These days most people have eaten Thai food in a restaurant at least once, so maybe a guide to Thai food for beginners is a little redundant. All the same, chef and I thought we’d put together a beginner’s guide to Thai food to help you out if Asian travel is new to you. Maybe you’re taking kids to Thailand ( great plan!) and wondering what they can eat or maybe you want to try cooking Thai food and aren’t sure where to start. Maybe your just visiting a Thai restaurant for the first time and need to know what to order. This guide to Thai food is for you.
Thai Food for beginners, it all starts with the ingredients.
Back in 1999, when I went to Thailand for the first time, I had never, ever tried Thai food that I hadn’t cooked myself.
I’d religiously watched Keith Floyd and his Far Flung Floyd TV series, bought his book and tried a few recipes. I thought I was doing something wrong. I was used to Indian curries so the thin, soupy Thai curries just didn’t seem right to me. They were delicious, but maybe they needed thickening?
I got used to them on that trip to Thailand and I tried just about every new dish I could find. A couple of years later Chef ( my husband) and I took a 3 day Thai cookery course in Chiang Mai. I’ve got a certificate to prove I can smash my own curry pastes, not that I ever do.
We’d never eaten so well as on that course, if you get the chance, take one! You’ll find cookery courses all over Thailand, starting at just half a day.
There is a lot of bad Thai food around, the only Thai restaurant back home in Port Douglas was a stinker! Some of the food you get in Thailand is bad too, if it’s churned out for tourists with no pride in the end product. But done right it’s incredible, many people consider it the most delicious food in the world. It’s light, healthy, delicately fragrant and full of vegetables. It’s not necessarily fiery hot. It’s really helped me feel healthier and thinner.
So chef and I want to give you Thai food for beginners, just in case there are any Thai food virgins out there, stressing over what to eat in this part of the world.
We’ve slaved long and hard over this, eaten at many restaurants and tried everything on the menu. I can’t cover everything here, but we’ll start with the basic Thai dishes. There is huge variation in how dishes are prepared, no two cooks ever make an identical meal. Eat around, find the restaurant you like and watch out for MSG, I’ve learnt the hard way that it can be nasty.
Don’t be scared of the chillies! You do find chillies in just about every dish but they’re not always hot. The bigger ones are just another vegetable, so mild my children will eat them without complaint. They’re full of vitamin C so eat up. It’s the little ones you’ve got to watch!
Often you add your own chilli to taste. The best places to eat have plenty of condiments to adapt your dish whichever way you like. You’ll see small devilish chillies in fish sauce ( Prik Nam Pla ) or vinegar and ground dries dried chillies and pastes. Make your own Thai condiments here.
Restaurants that serve tourists quite often assume the farangs aren’t up to the heat, you have to ask for your food spicy or with chilli ( prik in Thai).
Thai soups are served as part of the main meal, not as a starter. They’re filling enough in themselves, but sometimes people order rice on the side. With rice or without, either is OK, nobody will think you’re weird.
Your soup will contain sticks and leaves, you’re generally not supposed to eat them, although very young kaffir lime leaves are yum. Just take out the pieces of lemon grass, galangal ( galangal is far more woody than ginger), lime leaves, tamarind pods etc.
The two main soups you’ll find are Tom Ka ( or Tom Kha) and Tom Yam ( or Tom Yum).
Tom Yum
This bowl on Tom Tum Goong ( prawn) is the best I’ve ever eaten. Bought from a tiny backstreet restaurant in Hua Hin, I have never had another Tom Yum that could measure up, I dream of this soup!
This Thai dish maybe wasn’t for beginners, fiery hot tom yum, but delicious!
Tom yum is hot with chillies and sour with lime. It doesn’t normally contain coconut, the stock can be almost clear.
Tom Ka or Kha
Tom Ka is a highly fragrant thin coconut soup. It can be totally spice and chilli free, my children love it that way. Sometimes it has chillies. The key ingredients are the galangal and lemon grass. Kaffir lime leaves and fresh basil add more fragrance. Tom Ka often contains delicious Asian mushrooms. Our current favourite restaurant uses celery leaf, they’re a great addition.
Tom Ka is mild and fragrant. It’s my children’s favourite Thai dish
Pad Siew ( or Pad See Ew)
Chef’s favourite, pad siew, fried fat noodles.
I must have seen this spelt a dozen different ways. Spellings for everything vary immensely in Thailand.
This one is Chef’s favourite. Fat, slippery rice noodles fried with soy sauce ( the siew) and vegetables, with or without meat. Pad Siew contains greens, kale, Chinese broccoli, or similar.
Pad Thai
Probably the food most often consumed by tourists in Thailand and certainly a Thai food for beginners, Pad Thai can be delicious or dodgy. The one below, bought at a street-side restaurant in Bangkok was incredibly good. I’ve also had some that I just couldn’t eat, greasy with pig fat and some sort of toxic orange sauce.
A real Pad Thai has thin rice noodles stir-fried with eggs and small pieces of firm tofu. Its flavored comes from tamarind , fish sauce, tiny dried shrimps, garlic or shallots, chilies and sugar. It should be served with lime and peanuts. Sometimes there are vegetables, I think the best Pad Thai has plenty of bean sprouts. You can order it with meat or prawns sometimes.
All Thai curries are coconut milk based. Coconut milk isn’t the clear liquid inside a drinking coconut, that’s coconut water. Coconut milk is made from the flesh of the coconut and can be thick or thin. The eponymous colours of the curry come from the curry paste, all contain chillies and aromats. The curries all come with a choice of protein or straight vegetable. The main curries you will find are:
Green Curry
The green curry paste is green because it contains green chillies. Green curry is supposed to be sweeter than red curry, but I’ve not noticed. Fresh coriander, basil and kaffir lime leaf can enhance the paste’s greenness. Thai green curry almost always contains various mini green aubergines, sometimes quartered, sometimes whole. I love them!
Red Curry
Thai red curry paste contains fresh and dried red chillies.
Yellow Curry
Yellow curry is supposed to be richer and creamier than red or green curries because it contains coconut cream. The yellow comes from fresh turmeric in the paste, making it slightly Indian-like.
Massaman Curry. Massaman means Muslim. This curry contains potatoes, lots of sugar and peanuts and is about the heaviest dish you’ll find, I think. Chef loves this one.
Penang Curry.
Penang curry is similar to red curry, but sweeter. Coconut cream makes is heavier and richer.
These usually come in chicken, vegetable, prawn or tofu varieties. They’re all good and this is the stuff that my children love to eat. The sauces contain a little garlic, soy and sugar. Sometimes we order them with rice if we’re really hungry. They’re not greasy, or shouldn’t be.
Chicken with basil and chili. Don’t ask for this without heat, the chili makes the dish. Delicious and a Thai classic.
Chicken ( or other) with cashewnuts. I love vegetables with cashews, or tofu with cashews, I’m not much of a meat eater and non animal protein is hard to find sometimes.
Chicken with vegetables. It’s good, vegetables vary and are seasonal. They’re very fond of baby corn and cooked cucumber in Thailand.
Chicken with ginger is a family favourite with us and contains loads of shredded fresh ginger, as a vegetable, not a flavouring. You’ll also have a lot of onion and sometimes other vegetables
Thai style omelettes are one of my favourites.
Omelette Rice
Omelette rice is the budget traveller’s friend. It’s often the cheapest thing on the menu. It may not sound very exciting but it’s good when you hit it with the condiments.( Prik Nam Pla especially)
Thai filled omelettes, stuffed with a meat and herb mix are amazing!
Larp or Larb
Larb is a meat salad.
Finely chopped meat ( or tofu or mushrooms), usually cooked, mixed with herbs. The meat is sometimes served raw, I had raw pork this way years ago, which wasn’t clever.
Larb is really zingy with mint, lime juice and fish sauce . If your larp is crunchy or grainy, it contains chopped toasted rice. You normally have sticky rice and raw vegetables and chilies served on the side.
They do great laarp in Laos if you can find a good restaurant.
Thai Salads
Thai salads are great but I haven’t had one in years because I love the soups and curries so much, so no photos, yet! We made a few on our cookery course and they were an absolute revelation. Shredded green papaya is a major ingredient, along with fish sauce.
You can find whatever food you like in Thailand, pizzas, fries, sandwiches it’s all here. If you’re coming to Thailand and don’t fancy Thai food, you’re not ing to starve. But do yourself a favour, give it a go. Thai food is heaven.
