Pad thai, street style — cookly.recipes

Tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce in the ratio Bangkok stalls use — not the ketchup version.

WHAT YOU GET

The chef's hidden note — the technique no cookbook prints
Every component built from scratch, each with its own spec
Films on choosing and judging the produce before you buy it
Gross and net gram weights for every ingredient, per portion
Time and temperature at each stage, as run in the restaurant
A photo at every step that can go wrong
Substitutions for anything hard to find where you live
What usually goes wrong, and what to do about it

Yours for good once bought. Updates from the chef included.

BEFORE YOU BUY

Equipment: Wok, High-output burner or heavy pan
Allergens: Fish, Crustaceans, Peanuts, Soy
Method: 22 steps · 14 photographed · 5 filmed
Components: 4 made from scratch
Films: 3, 15 min

4 RECIPES INSIDE THIS RECIPE

Each with its own weights, steps and timings

The sauce, the cure, the dough, the dressing — a restaurant makes these itself, and so will you. Every one below is a full sub-recipe: its own ingredient list, its own method, its own yield and shelf life. Nothing says «use shop-bought».

Tamarind–palm sugar sauce

Film

A sweet-sour-salty syrup of tamarind pulp, palm sugar and fish sauce, cooked until it coats a spoon.

Bottled pad thai sauce leads with tomato and sugar; real tamarind pulp gives the sourness the dish is built on.

Wet tamarind pulp000 g
Palm sugar000 g
Something cured000 g
A hard cheese000 g
The bitter leaf000 g

Steps: 8
Time: 40 min
Hands-on: 20 min

Makes About 300 ml, enough for 8 portions · keeps 1 month refrigerated

Up to a month ahead; it thickens as it cools, so judge the set cold

Weights and method unlock on purchase

Pressed tofu

Firm tofu weighted to press out water, cut into batons and fried until the outside turns chewy and gold.

Supermarket tofu holds too much water to colour; pressing is what lets it fry instead of steaming in the wok.

Firm tofu000 g
Fine salt000 g
Something cured000 g
A hard cheese000 g
The bitter leaf000 g

Steps: 6
Time: 1.1 h
Hands-on: 15 min

Makes About 200 g of batons · keeps 3 days refrigerated unfried

Press up to 3 days ahead; fry to order, never in advance

Weights and method unlock on purchase

Chilli vinegar

Fresh chillies sliced into rice vinegar — the sour-hot one of the four pots (sugar, chilli powder, fish sauce, this) on stall tables.

Bottled chilli sauce is cooked, sweetened and thick; steeped raw chilli gives clean sourness and a heat that cooking would kill.

Fresh red chillies000 g
Green bird's eye chillies000 g
Something cured000 g
A hard cheese000 g
The bitter leaf000 g

Steps: 4
Time: 1 days
Hands-on: 10 min

Makes About 250 ml · keeps 6 weeks refrigerated before the colour goes

A day ahead at least — the raw burn settles after 24 hours

Weights and method unlock on purchase

Roasted crushed peanuts

Raw peanuts roasted in a dry wok, rubbed free of their skins and pounded to coarse rubble, not powder.

Bagged roasted peanuts are salted and long past fresh; peanuts pounded the same day still smell of the roast.

Raw skin-on peanuts000 g
Neutral oil000 g
Something cured000 g
A hard cheese000 g
The bitter leaf000 g

Steps: 5
Time: 35 min
Hands-on: 20 min

Makes About 150 g · keeps 2 weeks in a sealed jar, best on day one

Same day if you can; the roast smell is gone by day three

Weights and method unlock on purchase

WEIGHED

INGREDIENTS

A taste of the list · the rest locked

A few ingredients to show you what the dish is built on. Every one on the full list carries a gross and a net weight per portion, and a note on what you can swap it for where you live.

Rice noodles000 g
Tamarind paste000 g
Palm sugar000 g
Fish sauce000 g
Dried shrimp000 g
Smoked something000 g
A whole bulb000 g
Cold-pressed oil000 g
Aged for weeks000 g

The full list, weighed, unlocks on purchase

WATCH BEFORE YOU SHOP

3 films · 15 min

Most of what goes wrong is decided at the counter, before you cook anything. These are filmed by the chef: what to buy, how to tell it is good, and how to set your own kitchen up for it.

CHOOSING5:00

Tamarind in the shop: block, paste, concentrate

TECHNIQUE4:00

Soaking noodles instead of boiling them

KIT6:00

Wok heat on a domestic hob

METHOD

STEP BY STEP — 22 STEPS

14 photographed · 5 filmed

Written the way a restaurant writes a technical card: one operation per step, each with its own time and temperature. 14 of the 22 carry a photo of what it should look like at that moment, and 5 carry a short clip for the parts a still cannot show.

Hardest step: sauce onto noodles without stewing — step 13 of 22.

01
Read the whole method before you start, then weigh everything out. Every timing below assumes the next ingredient is already within reach.
Free preview
02
03
04
05
06
+ 16 more steps, timed and photographed

WHERE IT USUALLY GOES WRONG

3 things Ploy Srisai watches for every service. You can read what they are right now — the answer to each one comes with the recipe.

01
One portion at a time, and why
What to do about it
02
Adjusting the sauce for your tamarind
What to do about it
03
Getting the egg to stay separate
What to do about it

The chef's hidden note

The sauce ratio by weight, and how to adjust it for the tamarind you can actually buy.

Written by Ploy Srisai. Visible only to people who bought this recipe.

Read it — $0.99

NOTES FROM THE KITCHENS

11 verified cooks · 89% said it worked

Only people who bought the recipe and showed the dish they made can leave a note. Nobody is paid for it.

PAY $0.99 ONCE

11 people cooked it, 89% got it right, and that is the entire reason it costs $0.99 rather than nothing. In 39 more cooks the price becomes $2.99. Your copy never does.

One payment · Yours for good · No subscription