throughout my travels to Thailand one of my favorite dishes to taste whenever I see street vendors is pad thai and what are the wonderful things about pad thai is its textures its flavors its colors beautiful balance between the sweet sour salty bitter and spicy notes in this video I'm going to show you how to make this dish the classic way the actual cooking of peptide takes less than 10 minutes it's important to have all of your ingredients ready to go so the first thing to do is soak up all the ingredients that needs soaking for instance the noodles the backbone of the pot I recipe so I'm going to soak them in warm water could soak them in cold water just not hot water hot water will cook the noodles which you don't want to do soak them until they're pliable the next thing we're soaking are the shrimp these are dry shrimp and they're really used for seasoning more than anything just seasoning and they have a salt a salty flavor you're going to be soaking them about 20 minutes and it's important when you're choosing the shrimp at the market to look for something that's orange pink in color really meaty with less she'll just look for something that's plump like this and just a beautiful bright color the main protein in pad thai is pressed tofu you can tell it's pressed about I would say maybe three-quarters of an inch thick and all the water has literally been pressed out of it so the texture is a little bit chewy and it's a great thing for when you're doing stir fries because it retains a texture even when it doesn't break apart in the walk here what we're going to do is just slice the tofu and i'm using a cleaver but use anything you want chef's knife is cool quite all right there we go the next thing we're going to do is put together the sauce the seasoning this is where we're really balancing the flavors between sweet salty and sour three notes so far we'll be adding bitter and spicy later on main ingredient here is palm sugar palm sugar is from the coconut palm tree and what we're going to do is break it up a little bit it comes as a paste or in little blocks but either version will work do this I add tamarind concentrate and that gives the sour note to the recipe and to that fish sauce so like I said sweet sour and salty just keep whisking the sauce until it's smooth it's almost there okay it looks great and now the last ingredient that we add to our stir fry is garlic which I've already chopped and now we're going to prep our garnishes first we're going to slice the scallion what I like to do is slice it diagonally for presentation I find it it looks prettier and now I'm going to prep the Thai chilies because I would like to have a perfectly round slice I just roll the pod right in between my fingers to loosen the seeds and then I just cut the stems off and the seeds crow out just pull the very few last ones and now just the slicing of this perfectly round slice now you may want to wear gloves where you'll dealing with chilies next ingredient for garnish is the mung bean sprout now what I like to do here is actually take the mung beans and snap off that little root end that brownish part just to make it cleaner and there you have it very simple and another garnish are the peanuts just roasted unsalted peanuts and I just chopped these coarsely the last garnish this Thai basil you'll recognize it by its purple stem right here the leaves are fragrant giving it licorice flavor to the dish so here I'm just going to snap the leaf off and then just tear it and throw it on your noodle dish just before you serve it and we're ready to stir fry because the stir frying goes so fast you want to make sure that all of your ingredients are right near your right near the walk okay and in addition to what we prepped earlier I have the chicken stock and four eggs right here so now I'm going to do is I usually set the walk on the back burner so it doesn't spit the oil is in spit back at you and here i have it set over a high flame because we're stir frying and the idea is just to keep the ingredients moving very quickly so now we have a little bit of grapeseed oil and to that I'm going to add the garlic and we're going to stir fry that on the it's slightly golden and just as it's about to turn you can see it's a little golden here on the edges I'm going to just stir it a little bit I'm going to add the shrimp here we go stir fry that until fragrant trying to do is really just bring out the flavors here and this is about right so we're going to move the shrimp from the walk we're building the flavors one layer at a time from it a little bit more oil and now we're going to add the tofu and as you can see what we're using firm tofu it doesn't break apart like regular toiletries which is why it's often used in sterilized and we're just going to certify this until it's nice and golden this is a really nice scholar this is what you're trying to achieve throughout the stir-fry here and this is about right now we're going to move on to the next ingredients and add a little bit more oil swirl this around a little bit and now we have our eggs and what you want to do with the eggs are scramble them without necessarily mixing them too much you want a fair amount of white and yellow and you want to make sure that they're not too way but also not too dry so you want a nice glistening effect on the top of the eggs and then we're almost there there we go and this is done so here we wipe any excess egg in the walk and we're ready to move on to the next step so again we're going to add oil and then this beautiful sauce of tamarin fish sauce and palm sugar and now the chicken stock and to this we're ready to add the noodles now they're nice and soft beautifully pliable I know we're doing here is just draining them loosely it's okay for the little water goes back into the wok it's good right now and now this is going to cook for about 2 stay 4 to 5 minutes absorbing all of the liquid and really building a beautiful flavor into the noodle itself so now the noodles have absorbed most of the liquid it still has a little bit more to absorb but right now is about the right time to incorporate the shrimp with garlic and the tofu and we're just going to incorporate all that mix it up really nicely and as you can see the noodles are continuing to absorb the remaining liquid and at the same time it we're doing is really moistening the tofu and a shrimp noodles are beautiful right now and I believe we're ready to serve so you want to put a fair amount of noodles in the bowl and then top that with some tofu try shrimp make it look nice and pretty there we go and now we're ready to garnish when you're in Thailand and you're sitting you know at one of those you pull up to one of the street vendors cards you know they don't have put I for you and you'll be able to garnish your very own if I'm entertaining at home I just like to serve it beautifully garnished already here what I like to do is break up the eggs and put them off to one side just like this you want some of the white part and the yolk and to this I'm going to add the mung bean sprouts pile them up like so and here more color gets really pretty just a little bit of scallion some crunchy peanuts all around not a beautiful vibrant color of red chillies and Thai basil no I'm doing here is just tearing the basil like so and for the finishing touch the line now what they do in Thailand is carve something that goes into the plate so this is a garnish we're using the line which will squeeze on top of the dish afterwards but this recalls the beautiful carvings that Thailand is so famous for and it's really so simple you just run the blade right on the edge of the line and then you just turn in all these little cuts you've made around the line and there's your dish right here now I just have to have a taste of this delicious noodle dish mmm this is exactly what we wanted the sweet from the palm sugar the sourness from the tamarin and the lime juice saltiness from the fish sauce heat from the chilies everything is there in the single dish you