Easy Pad Thai

Ever since we had a Thai student work in my previous lab I've had a serious love for Thai food, but I am not nearly as good of a chef as my friend Maetee Patana-Anake so I've had to settle for what I could get at a restaurant. This wasn't a problem in little 'ol Columbia Missouri where we had the coolest little Thai restaurant that was run out of a van down by the river. No kiddin', a van down by the river... Ok, well maybe an RV down by the river, but still it was a hole in the wall, but was wonderful. Since we've moved to Baltimore I searched for good Thai food but only recently found a restaurant that is half as good as what Maetee made, and close to par with the van down by the river. 
Since this restaurant is in down town Baltimore I don't make it there very often so I found this recipe hoping it would sate my Thai tastes until I can get back there.


Good news for less than skillful chefs, this is SUPER EASY! I'd say a 2 on the 1-10 scale with 1 being easiest. Other good news is that all the ingredients for this can be found at the local super market or Wal-mart. The most exotic thing in the recipe are the rice noodles which can usually be found in any Asian section of any supermarket. The bad news, is that although delicious it wasn't an authentic Pad Thai. I did make a couple of modifications so first I'll give you the link for the original recipe.


http://browniesfordinner.com/2010/05/11/easy-pad-thai/

Easy Pad Thai

Ingredients:
1 package of rice noodles (13.2 oz)
2 limes
2 Tbs brown sugar
3 Tbs Soy sauce (I used Trader Joe's low sodium)
1/3 c Peanuts
1/4 c. cilantro
2 green onions
2 eggs
1 Tbs of veggie oil
1/4 c. of chicken broth 
1 garlic clove minced finely or use cubes (see picture below)
Sriracha to taste 


Place the rice noodles in a glass dish and add hot water. Allow the noodles to soften for 30-40 minutes. This was per the instructions on the package, so check your package before you follow this step. You just want the noodles to be softened before we toss them in a pan later.

Chop up the cilantro and set aside

The original recipe says chop up the peanuts and show the blogger with a knife cutting peanuts. I'm both too lazy and too uncoordinated to do this without chopping a finger off, so I chose instead to pulse them in my magic bullet. Unfortunately, it got stuck so my peanuts were a bit more of a finer ground than chopped, but it worked!

 Chop up the green onions. Slice the white parts thin and then the green parts in 3/4" sections and set aside.

Slice one lime in 1/2 and squeeze the juice out (aprox 2 tablespoons of juice). Quarter the 2nd lime and the other half of the first lime. Place the lime juice in a bowl with the brown sugar and soy sauce and whisk until the sugar has incorporated.

Put the oil in a pan and sautee green onions and garlic until the onions are soft. My favorite short cut is to use the frozen crushed garlic cubes you can find at Trader Joes when a recipe calls for fresh garlic.

Scramble the 2 eggs and add to the pan. Cook the eggs with the garlic and onion until nearly done and set aside.

Add noodles to the pan, pour in sauce, green onion tops

Once the sauce is mostly incorporated add the eggs back to the mix and break up into smaller pieces

If the noodles become too sticky (like mine did) add 1/4 c. chicken broth and then dish up your noodles into a bowl and top with chopped peanuts and cilantro.

You can also top with Sriracha if you want  to spice it up a bit more.

So other than waiting for the noodles to soften this whole thing took me probably 20 minutes of hands on cooking, and was really easy to make. It tasted fantastic and could easily be modified by adding sauteed chicken breasts.
As always, feel free to comment or ask questions! I'd love to hear from whomever is reading and visiting. 
Happy Eating!