Tip to Home Cook Authentic Thai Food

What makes food authentic to its origin is generally not the material we use, but the ingredients. Whether the Sashimi we have in New York tastes real Japanese is probably not the type of fish we prepare but more to the Wasabi and the Soya source we use. This is the same to Thai cooking.

The fastest growing restaurants in the world today are certainly Thai. Chinese restaurants may boast the biggest number but Thai is no doubt commands the highest growth rate. This is especially true since Thailand has emerged successfully as the kitchen of the world shipping out surplus ready made food to feed the hungry world in quantity.

We also witness many self-proclaimed Thai restaurants, with tempting window signs of the genuine Thai cooking to attract customer around the world, selling food by the pound that can hardly called Thai. I still remember we walked into a spectacular Thai restaurant in Ottawa few years ago only to find out that both the owner and the cooks are actually non Thai.

So, what makes Thai cuisine Thai? The answer is the ingredients. Thai ingredients can be classified in 3 big groups for convenience.

The first and foremost is spices. These include chili of all kinds, fresh, dried, whole, cut, slice, minced, grind, powder, paste, pickle, and sweet, salty, sour, you name it. A dish without chili is probably not a Thai dish.

Thai also uses pepper and garlic to spice up food. There is an Esan (Eastern Thai) word "Sap" which is supposed to mean tasty, but it also means chili hot. So, chili hot food is tasty food.

KFC is selling well with the chili hot recipe. Pizza hut too is hot here, not by the temperature but the chili. Even the can tuna is no longer in brine and oil, it is in all types of chili in Thailand.

The second group is herbs and leaves such as lemon grass, citrus leaf, onion, red onion, lime, wild celery herb, basil leaf, and various types of local tree leaves.

This is also the difficult to get ingredients if you are not in Thailand. You may substitute lemon for lime but you can not substitute parsley for wild celery herb. It will immediately make the dish taste inauthentic.

Last but not least are the sauces and pastes. Thai cooking, unlike other oriental food, uses fish sauces instead of Soya sauce to flavor. We also use krill-paste extensively for cooking. As a matter of fact, krill paste, fresh vegetables, omelet and Pla-two (a type of regional sardine fish) has for centuries been and still is a basic Thai staple. And do not forget the coconut juice, crème and paste too.

Thai really likes their food rich with multiple tastes. To be a tasty food, it must have all the strong flavors of sweet, salty, sour, and most important is hot. If you have ever seen a Thai eat a bowl of noodle or a plate of any thing, 9 out of 10 will scoop in chili, sugar, grinded peanut, squeeze lime, and pour fish sauce.

So, next time you want to cook a Thai dish, you would better make sure you have all the required ingredients. I guarantee you will not only end up with an authentic Thai food, it will be "Sap" and "A-Roi" too.