What to Eat in Thailand_ Thai Chef's Top 10 List!

Sawasdee ka, welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. So if you're a foodie like me, whenever you travel to another country, a lot of your research probably revolves around what to eat. Because when you have a limited time, you do not want to waste a single calorie on anything that is not worth it. So today I want to give you my list of must-have foods when you go to Thailand to make the most of all of your meals. Now this is not simply a list of delicious things because that's a given. But the things on this list are also things you cannot easily remake at home. Things you can't just go off to a local Thai restaurant overseas to find. So when you are in Thailand, that is your chance. And I think some of the things on this list might surprise you. I also want to make the items on this list not too hard to find. So I'm not going to include any obscure things you've got to go to this particular town to find. And also in addition to specific dishes, I'll include categories of things. So however long you have, wherever you end up in Thailand, you will be able to tick some of the things off this list. And if you want specific restaurant recommendations or tips on where to look out for these foods, head over to the blog post on hotthaikitchen.com. It'll all be right there, linked below. Number one, Boat Noodles or Kway Teow Reua. Noodle soup culture in Thailand is absolutely unrivaled. Noodle soups are a big part in the Thai diet, but totally underrepresented in restaurants overseas. So while you are in Thailand, you have to try at least one type of noodle soup. But with so many options and so little time, which do you choose? Well, for me, it's very easy. No questions asked, Boat Noodles. Because one, in my opinion, I think it is the most delicious one. It is so flavorful, so complex, so many things going on. And two, if you try to make Boat Noodles at home, even if you could find all the ingredients, which a lot of people won't be able to, it is still a project. It is a lot of ingredients if you wanted to make a fully loaded one. So while you're in Thailand, you should get, take the opportunity to try it while it's easy to find. And yes, in big cities, there are probably several restaurants that offer Boat Noodles. But speaking from experience, they're usually not as good as the ones in Thailand. Number two is any curry you've never heard of. Yes, I know you probably want to know what green curry tastes like in Thailand. But if you missed that, you can pretty easily make a good one at home using my recipe, of course. But while you're in Thailand, I want you to experience all the different curries that you've never known existed. Because believe me, there are so many different kinds of curries beyond the red, green, yellow, Massaman, and Panang. For example, you can try Kaeng Teh Poh or Kaeng Om, two curries that are very popular in Thailand, but very few restaurants offer it overseas. And if you are going to have a green or red curry, at least try the ones that have ingredients you've never had. For example, pea eggplant, heart of palm, or even cooked blood. Yes, cooked blood is very commonly added to green or red curry. It's one of my favorites. It's so good. Just trust me on this one. By the way, many Thai curries are not rich and creamy the way you might expect a curry to be. A lot of our curries are light and brothy, very much like soup. But in Thai cuisine, they still fall under the category of curries or Kaeng, because they use curry paste as the flavor base. Just so you're not surprised when you start ordering curries you don't know. Three, Kanom Krok. And now we are talking desserts. Now I have a huge sweet tooth, okay? And I take my desserts very seriously. And Kanom Krok is one of my favorites. If not the actual favorite Thai dessert. They're often described as coconut pancakes, but that really doesn't capture what they are. So a coconut rice flour batter is cooked in a cast iron pan with little round indents. And then it's filled with a coconut pudding. And the two is cooked together, so you end up like with a crispy shell and a super creamy coconut pudding in the middle. And then it's topped sometimes with taro, corn, or green onions. Yes, green onions. Don't knock it till you try it. Yes, it's still dessert and it absolutely works. And the green onions is my favorite topping. Now in theory, you can make this at home and I have a recipe for it. But you need to get a special pan and the technique takes practice. You will not get it perfect the first time. And even if you did all that, they'll still taste better in Thailand. Because in Thailand, they will use fresh coconut milk, which makes a big difference when it comes to coconut milk for dessert, such as this one. Now you might be thinking, wait a minute. Every Thai restaurant outside of Thailand literally has Pad Kra Pao on the menu. HotThaiKitchen.com has like four Pad Kra Pao recipes on it. Why should I get this in Thailand? Well, because you probably never had it made with real Kra Pao or holy basil, which is the eponymous herb of this dish. Real holy basil is extremely rare outside of Thailand. They don't grow well outside of the tropics. And the stuff that's imported or grown in Mexico, it's usually bred for durability, for shipping, and they're not very aromatic. So 99% of Pad Kra Pao in North America, at least, is made with Thai basil or Hor Pa, which tastes very different from Kra Pao. It's still good, but it's very different. And even if they're using real Kra Pao, it's likely not the aromatic one. So while you're in Thailand, that is your chance to experience what real Pad Kra Pao tastes like using real potent Kra Pao leaves. Not to mention, if you have Pad Kra Pao in North America, they'll make it with the basic stuff, you know, chicken, beef, pork. But in Thailand, you can find Pad Kra Pao made with all kinds of things, including my favorite, crispy pork belly and century eggs. By the way, if you're not going to Thailand anytime soon, the recipes for many of the things on this list are in my new e-book. So this e-book has 25 of the most popular classic Thai recipes, and I wanted to make this the most convenient way for you to cook from my recipes without having to go online and without any ads. Each video also links directly to my YouTube video tutorial, so you do not have to go searching if you need it. So check it out at the link below and thank you in advance for your support of Hot Thai Kitchen. Number five is Ran Khao Geng. And this is not a specific dish, but a kind of restaurant. And Ran Khao Geng means curry rice shop. But they have much more than curries. So it's a unique type of place that serves food cafeteria style, meaning they've got all the food already done, set in trays or big pots, and you just go look at all the things they have, point to which one you want, and they'll put that on top of rice because everything that they have there is supposed to be served with rice. And the reason I suggest you try it, because this is the closest you will get to a home-cooked Thai meal without having to go into somebody's home for dinner. The stuff that they have is just rustic things, like simple stir-fries, like kabocha squash and basil stir-fry, simple soups, like kai palo, they've got deep fried things, they've got salads, I mean. But they're all things that one would conceivably make at home and nothing fancy like you might get in restaurants or nothing specialized that you might have to go to a specialist to get. Not to mention, for many busy Thai families who don't have time to cook at home, this place is exactly where they go to buy their dinner. So they get stuff without rice, they bring it home, they cook their own rice, and dinner is ready. And this is also a good place to look for that curry that you've never heard of before. And it's also just super fun to be able to see all the things right in front of you as opposed to looking at a menu and you don't know what anything looks like. Number six, seafood restaurant or ร้านอาหารทะเล. This is again not a specific dish but a type of restaurant. As you may know, Thailand is the peninsula. We have a very long coastline so we have a lot of seafood and we take our seafood very seriously. So seriously that seafood restaurants or ร้านอาหารทะเล is one of the biggest, most popular genre of restaurants in the central and southern regions of Thailand which are the two regions that are attached to the ocean. And for most people, you're going to end up in the central or the south at some point in your trip because the south is where the beaches are and the center is where everybody flies into because that's where Bangkok is. Now when you are at a seafood restaurant, just order whatever, it's all good. But some recommendations, my personal favorite, are steamed blue crab with น้ำจิ้ม seafood which is our seafood dipping sauce. Just plain steamed, you have to experience the Thai crab in its unadulterated form. For something more flavorful, you can order curry crab which is also one of my go-to. Steamed barramundi with garlic and lime sauce is a great bright tart dish to contrast the curry crab. If you've got kids, order the shrimp with glass noodles. Finally, river prawns. If you're in Bangkok, you gotta order the river prawns. They can be done in many different ways but my favorite is fried with garlic and trust me, they're better than lobster. And as a reminder, specific restaurant recommendations will be in the blog post which I'll link to in the description below. Moving on now to specific dish recommendation, เมียงขำ which are little bite-sized wild betel leaf wraps. And the wrap is filled with all kinds of things. Toasted coconut, peanut, lime, shallots, ginger. I mean it's just there's like a whole bunch of ingredients in it and it's all held together with the sweet savory sauce and it is unbelievably delicious. And the reason I consider this a must-have is because it is truly unique tasting. There's nothing else in Thai cuisine that tastes like เมียงขำ and there's so much going on. Sweet, salty, sour, crunchy, chewy, savory. It's just an explosion of flavor in every sense of the word. And it's such an iconic flavor that Lays in Thailand has a เมียงขำ flavor. The worst case scenario, you buy Lays เมียงขำ, okay? If you miss it, you go to 7-Eleven. I do have a recipe for this on hotthaikitchen.com but the ingredients on that list are all pretty hard to find and it is not going to be a quick and easy recipe by any stretch of imagination. And it is one of the reasons why I filmed that video in Thailand because I couldn't have filmed it here. There just wouldn't be all the ingredients that I needed. When you're in Thailand, a few restaurants do have เมียงขำ on the menu but it's not common. So you're better off looking for a DIY เมียงขำ kit. So all the ingredients will be prepared and ready to go and you just have to put everything together into a wrap yourself and you can find these at some supermarkets and also any sort of open-air food market. Number 8 is a proper อีสาน เมียง. อีสาน is the northeastern region of Thailand and you probably already know many อีสาน dishes because they're world-famous. Green papaya salad or ส้มตำ, ลาบ, sticky rice, just to name a few. But what's offered in a Thai restaurant overseas is so limited compared to what an อีสาน restaurant offers in Thailand. Like you see 25 different kinds of ส้มตำ many of which doesn't even have any green papaya at all. You will see like 15 different kinds of ลาบ. You see all kinds of funky soups. You will see whole grilled catfish. It's just so much more and they'll do all kinds of funky things that Thai restaurants here wouldn't dare do because it would be a hard sell to a western audience. So if you are an adventurous eater and you like spicy food, this is a must. And it's also a really fun meal. I always just enjoy it so much because you're eating with your hands because they're like sticky rice and barbecued chicken and you're always sweating. It's just always a really good time. It's also really easy to find because อีสาน restaurants are very popular. You can find them anywhere in Thailand, not just in อีสาน region. So this one is an easy win. Number nine, ขนมจีน. ขนมจีน is a category of dishes where we have fresh, sometimes fermented rice noodles and then a sauce poured on top. And there's lots of different kinds of sauces you can choose from. So it's sort of like Thai pasta where the noodles is the same and the noodles is what's called ขนมจีน, by the way. But then you can pair it with different kinds of sauces. And different regions of Thailand have different kinds of sauces. So in the north, you would want to have ขนมจีนน้ำเงียว. And in the south, you would want to have ขนมจีนน้ำยา. And then if you're in the central region, you can try ขนมจีน with green curry. So it's just super fun. The reason why I think this is a must is because one, it is extremely rare for a Thai restaurant overseas to have ขนมจีน on the menu. I've never actually seen one. I can't think of one right now. And two, even if they did, or if you try to make it at home using my recipe, it's going to be a bit of a compromise because you will have to use dry noodles. And you have to boil the dry noodles. And just the texture is just not the same. And so when you're in Thailand, some restaurants might have one type of ขนมจีน on the menu. But I think it is best if you go to a ขนมจีน specialist. So you know that they're using fresh noodles. Or even better, they use fermented noodles, a little bit tangy. And then you have lots of different sauces to choose from. Finally, number 10, we will end with a dessert. Mango sticky rice or ข้าวเนียวมะม่วง. And again, you're thinking, come on, I can get ข้าวเนียวมะม่วง anywhere in America. Yes, but not with Thai mangoes. And if you've never had Thai mangoes, it is a must, especially if you're in Thailand during the peak mango season, which is March and April. If you've only ever had mango sticky rice outside of Thailand, and you love that, you owe it to yourself to try the uncompromised version served with the type of mango that was intended for this dessert and made with sticky rice that uses fresh coconut milk, which again makes a big difference for a dessert such as this. So don't miss it. And that is it. I hope this helps you plan your next trip to Thailand. And again, restaurant recommendations and tips for where to look for these things, like do you look for it in restaurants or in a food market, all of that will be in the blog post linked below, including links to recipes while you wait for your next trip to go to Thailand so you can try making it at home. I have recipes for just about everything on this list. A special thanks to all of Patreon members who help support the show. And thank you for watching. And I will see you next time. Sawasdee ka.