Thai Cooking and Its Key Ingredients

Thai cooking is celebrated throughout the world because of its signature spicy taste. Foreigners may find the dishes too spicy but the locals simply lap it up. Despite the popularity of instant food and fast foods, Thais are still adamant in maintaining traditional dishes that require time to prepare.

Thai Cooking and Its Key Ingredients

What is so special about the dishes in Thailand?

Read on to know about the key ingredients that makes Thai dishes so full of flavor!

The variety of herbs and spices are at the core of Thai cooking. Thai dishes explore the combinations of these herbs and spices to create the spicy, sweet, sour and salty flavors. Commonly, Thai cooking recipes use paste as base.

There are ready made pastes like the red curry, yellow curry and green curry available in supermarkets and stores which you can use. However, these deprive you of the authentic aroma and taste, and the valuable nutrients to be gained when using the real ingredients. This is why most Thais prefer making their own paste.

Traditionally, pastes are produced from whole spices and fresh or dried herbs. These are gathered together and then pounded using a mortar and pestle. The blend of these ingredients creates a symphonic mixture of flavor. Nowadays, chefs make use of a food processor to create the mixture. It is more convenient and more accurate in preparing the paste.

Thai cooking basically involves paste made of pieces of onion, garlic and pepper. The main spices are added with other herbs to make it more flavorful and spicier. Additional herbs include coriander, chili powder, lemongrass, turmeric and galangal.

The signature Thai aroma comes from the kaffir lime leaves; this distinctive flavor comes out easily once the dish starts simmering. Lemongrass is used sparingly in Thai dishes since it can easily blend with other spices and herbs.

For simple Thai cooking, it is cut into strands but more complex dishes chop or pound lemongrass into bits. To make use of its aroma and taste for soup and paste, lemongrass is bent and kneaded; this process releases the “juices” of lemongrass into the food.

Thai Cooking and Its Key Ingredients – Galangal

Galangal, another well known Thai spice comes from the family of ginger and is similar to turmeric. This spice is abundant in Thailand but Western countries often find it difficult to find.

The common alternative to this is ginger though galangal still has an advantage when it comes to flavor. Its roots are a source of nutrients and authentic taste that characterizes the Thai dishes.