Chicken Pad Thai

No, this is not an authentic pad thai but a simplified version that reminds me more of the times I bought this at various restaurants around Sweden. In Thailand it is apparently also unlikely that you will get a Pad Thai with anything other than shrimp. An authentic pad thai contains a lot of ingredients that can be a bit difficult to get here, so I went through a lot of recipes and tried to simplify as much as I could but still retain the essence of the flavors. I think I succeeded well with this.

I also don't have a wok but cook everything in a larger frying pan instead which works quite well. If you have a wok, it is preferable - you can then handle the dish a little differently (e.g. keep fried chicken warm on the side of the wok while you fry other ingredients) but in this version I use a regular frying pan. One important thing, however, is not to throw too many ingredients into the pan at once, which is also the reason why the recipe is only for 2 servings. If you want to make more, you should do everything in batches and not try to cook everything at once.

So even though I change some ingredients, there are a few things I definitely want to include and that you may have to look for a bit:

• Tamarind paste - This is the sour ingredient in the sauce and something you can't skip.
• Rice noodles - I use the flat variety that is 5 mm wide and comes as short "sticks". Here you don't boil these noodles but soak them for an hour and then let them cook in the sauce.
• Black Sweet Soy Sauce - Not 100% necessary, but adds some flavor to the chicken.
• Bean sprouts - to lighten the dish a bit so it doesn't just become a lump of noodles.

I managed to find everything I needed for this recipe at ICA, which now has a fairly large selection of Asian ingredients. However, I have tried a few different variations of Asian ingredients and the taste/spicyness/saltiness can differ quite a bit between the different brands so you may need to adjust the amounts a bit based on which variation is used. I'll post a picture of the ingredients I found and used further down the page.

A more authentic version of pad thai contains things like palm sugar, dried shrimp, tofu, daikon, and Chinese chives ("garlic chives") but these can be a bit hard to come by here so I choose to either exclude them completely or replace them with something that is more available here at home.

The sauce in an authentic version is also more involved to prepare (you heat up the palm sugar and let it caramelize), but once again - I simplify this process and use brown sugar and just mix this with the other ingredients in a bowl.

I let the chicken marinate for a while in "Black Sweet Soy Sauce", but if you don't have this, I have seen that you can use both regular soy sauce and/or oyster sauce as alternatives.

The actual cooking in the frying pan/wok is quite quick so it makes it easier to have everything prepared before you start. The noodles should be soaked, the chicken sliced ​​and marinated, the sauce mixed and the onion sliced. This way it is easier to keep track of what is happening in the pan and throw in the ingredients when it is time.

Overall, I am very happy with this simplified version even if you do not achieve the highest degree of authentic Pad Thai. But if you are looking for a homemade alternative to the versions you buy at fast food chains, this is, in my opinion, perfect.