Thai food is a popular cuisine known for its complex flavors and use of fresh ingredients such as herbs, spices, vegetables, and meats. The cuisine is heavily influenced by Chinese, Indian, and Malay cuisines, and is characterized by its balance of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy flavors.
Some popular Thai dishes include Pad Thai (stir-fried rice noodles with vegetables, eggs, and peanuts), Tom Yum (a spicy and sour soup), Green Curry (a spicy and creamy curry with chicken or beef), Som Tam (a spicy papaya salad), and Massaman Curry (a mild curry with potatoes and peanuts).
Rice is a staple in Thai cuisine, and is often served alongside dishes or used as a base for stir-fried dishes or curries. Thai food is also known for its vibrant and colorful presentation, often incorporating a variety of vegetables and herbs to create a visually appealing and flavorful meal.
If you ask any foreigners who have ever visited Thailand about their favourite Thai food, their answers, almost without exception, will be tom yam kung.
Tom yam kung, or spicy shrimp soup, is the number one of the top ten Thai dishes loved by foreigners, according to a recent investigation. And in fact, it is one of the most favourite dishes for Thai people as well. It is simply because it is so delicious for its unique sour and spicy taste that you will certainly need it more and more if you try it just once.
Thai food generally not only provides a wonderful taste but also includes medicinal properties in its herbal ingredients as well. Tom yam kung is one of the best examples. To make you acquainted with this special Thai dish, this article will introduce you to the recipe for the soup and its herbal properties.
Ingredients :
1 pint of water
10 large shrimps
1 cup of mushrooms
1 stalk of lemon grass chopped
2 kaffir-lime leaves
1 table spoon of chopped coriander leaves
1/2 teaspoon of ground chilli (the amount can be adjusted according to one’s preference)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of lime juice
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
How to cook :
Pour the water into a pot, add the lemon grass and kaffir-lime leaves and heat it.
Add the shrimps when the water is boiling and cover the pot.
Wait for 3 minutes before adding the mushrooms and salt.
Leave it to simmer for a few minutes. Then remove from the heat.
Season with fish sauce, lime juice and ground chilli.
Put the chopped coriander leaves in the pot before serving.
To enhance the flavour, sometimes nam phrik phao or roast chilli paste is added to the soup before it is removed from the heat. For foreigners who are not accustomed with its original taste, just add some milk to the soup to make its taste milder and blended well.
Tips : Best served hot with a plate of steamed rice and a dish of omelette.
For the medicinal properties of tom yam kung, different herbs offer different functions. Their properties are described below:
Tom Yum Kung in a bowl with tomato, chili, lemongrass, garlic, lemon, and kaffir lime leaves
Lemon grass
Lemon grass can help relieve excessive gas in the stomach or intestine, increase the secretion of urine, reduce heat in the body and prevent the spread of some kinds of bacteria.
Chilli
Chilli is used as cough medicine. It is useful for the respiratory system, blood circulation and heart as well.
Lime
Lime helps to prevent coughing, flu and scurvy.
Kaffir-lime
Kaffir-lime is used to deodorize the strong smell of some food. Its juice can cure cough, dandruff and some types of stomach ache.
Those are just some of the medicinal properties in tom yam kung. Besides, it is full of nutrients from shrimps and vegetables. You will see that the food not only makes you full, but makes you healthy. That is an important reason why tom yam kung is noted as the number one of Thai dishes.
The popular papaya salad, a delicious dish, is ubiquitous in Northern Thai cuisine. Almost every vendor, open air market and restaurant serves papaya salad, and if not, they will direct you to the nearest place regardless of where you live. Anywhere in Northern Thailand!
or known by foreigners as ‘Papaya Pok Pok’ due to the sound of preparing it with a pestle and mortar. Papaya Salad is a deliciously crunchy salad made with green beans, tomatoes, dried shrimp, garlic, fresh lime juice, Thai bird poop, chili, carrots, roasted peanuts and green (uncooked) fruits and Julian-style papaya (paw). among locals and foreigners Therefore, there are fresh food vendors selling papaya salad in every market. Either open air or indoor during the day or night
Papaya salad ingredients include papaya, pickled crab, eggplant, tomato, lime, chili, garlic and fermented fish.
Half the fun of papaya salad is watching it cook! The proper nickname is ‘Papaya Pok Deng’ comes from the sound of pestle and mortar pounding on whole cloves of garlic, chili, palm sugar and tamarind juice. and other spices, Asian food
The use of fermented fish sauce in this dish is a deeply ingrained habit in Thai cooking. And papaya salad is inevitable with this addition. So it may take some time to envelops your taste buds with its pungent aroma. Behind the stigma of the marinated fish sauce lies a fresh flavor. Incredibly fizzy and spicy with a crunchy texture that invites you to taste Which is synonymous with the flavors of Asian cuisine.
Papaya salad served with rice noodles and vegetable salad Decorated with Thai food ingredients.
In addition to Thailand Thai papaya salad is also popular in many countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan and America where some ingredients have been adapted to suit the tastes of people in each country. But the taste and main ingredients still follow the authentic Thai papaya salad recipe from Thailand anyway. Therefore, Thai papaya salad is a unique food symbol of Thailand that many people know and respect from different countries of the world.