Welcome to Thai Takeaways, a guide to your local Thai takeaways!
Thai cuisine is one of the most popular cuisines in the world and it’s all about balance, attention to detail, variety, intricacy, texture, colour, taste, flavour and ingredients with medicinal benefits. Thai chefs pay particular attention to how dishes taste, look, smell and fit in with the rest of the meal and they think of all parts of the meal as a whole. “The way Thais eat” is the term used for the unique components that make up a Thai meal.
Thai cooking emphasises lightly prepared dishes with strong aromatic components and a spicy edge. It’s known for its complex interplay of three to five fundamental taste senses in each dish or the overall meal: sweet, sour, spicy, salty and bitter. It’s about juggling contrasting elements to create a harmonious finish and it’s the complexity Thais delight in.
Rice is the staple grain of Thai cuisine and it is the first and most important part of any meal. Noodles are usually made from rice, wheat or mung bean flours. Thai food is known for its ardent use of fresh vegetables, herbs, spices and leaves. Meats used are usually pork, chicken duck, beef and water buffalo. Fish, crustaceans and shellfish play an important role in the Thai diet. Pastes and sauces feature heavily. Fresh fruit forms a large part of the Thai diet and are customarily served after a meal as dessert and also in spicy salads, soups, curries and in pastes.
Feeling hungry? Why not order a Thai take-away online from Dinner2go or EatNow!
Thai cuisine’s plentitude of exotic flavours and fragrances are seemingly limitless and it celebrates the fresh and fragrant.
Popular Thai dishes include:
Tom Yum Goong – Spicy Shrimp Soup
A bold, invigorating mix of aromatic lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, chilli, shallots, lime juice and fish sauce moulds this classic, distinctively fragrant, sour-spicy-hot soup, giving it its herbal kick. Luscious, fresh prawns and straw mushrooms give it body.
Tom Kha Kai – Chicken in Coconut Soup
A sweet, tame twist on Tom Yum, this iconic soup infuses fiery chillies, galangal, shallots, lemongrass and tender strips of chicken. Unlike watery Tom Yum, oodles of coconut milk soften its spicy kick. Topped with fresh lime leaves, it’s a sweet-smelling, creamy, compelling concoction.
Som Tum – Spicy Green Papaya Salad
Originating in Isaan in northeast Thailand, this is a distinctive, love-hate dish. Garlic, chilli, long green beans, cherry tomatoes and strips of crunchy, unripe, raw papaya are pulverised in a pestle and mortar with lime and fish sauce, releasing a rounded sweet-sour-spicy flavour. Regional variations add peanuts, dry shrimp or salted crab. Couple with sticky rice for a light, stimulating meal.
Yam Nua – Spicy Beef Salad
Experience the fresh, fiery thrill of yam nua with its lively blend of onion, coriander, spearmint, lime, chilii and tender strips of beef. It symbolises the stimulating in-the-mouth-thrill of all Thai salads.
Gaeng Daeng – Red Curry
Made with tidbits of meat, red curry paste, coconut milk and a sprinkling of kaffir lime leaves, this rich, aromatic curry gets your taste buds tingling. At its best when the meat is beautifully tender, it’s mild, sweet and delicately fragrant.
Gaeng Keow Wan Kai – Green Chicken Curry
Morsels of chicken, cherry-sized eggplants, bamboo shoots, coriander and handfuls of sweet basil are the elements that form the body of this curry. The spoonfulls of green curry paste that are stirred into hot, creamy coconut milk give it its gloriously green colour. Couple with a bowl of fragrant jasmine rice.
Pad Thai – Thai style Fried Noodles
Pad Thai is the default international Thai dish, prepared in a searing hot wok with your preference of small, thin or wide rice noodles, stir-fried with crunchy beansprouts, onion, tofu, shrimp and egg. Pad Thai is a participation meal so you put on the seasoned finishing touches to suit your taste buds of fish sauce, sugar, chilli, tamarind, vinegar and and the crowning ingredient: peanuts ground to near dust.
Khao Pad – Fried Rice
For many Thai people, fried rice is comfort food. Fried rice with egg, onion and herbs is a popular lunch dish, served typically with lime wedges and cucumber slices. The secret lies in its simplicity. The concept: you’re the one eating it, so you dress it. Thais use everything from prawns, crab or chicken to basil, chilli and left-over vegetables and in the process turn the dish into a gastronomic delight with endless variations!
Pad Krapow Moo Saap – Fried Basil and Pork
An extremely popular ‘one plate’ lunch or dinner meal, fried basil and pork is one of the most popular Thai dishes, which is flash-fried with plenty of holy basil leaves, chilli, garlic, pork, green beans, soy sauce and a little sugar. The minced, fatty pork combines with the steamed white rice for a delicious, fulfilling meal. It is often topped off with a fried egg.
Kai Med Ma Muang – Chicken with Cashew Nuts
Nuts and chicken are a heavenly match – perhaps it’s the contrasting textures of a dish that saute’s chicken alongside roasted cashew nuts, sweet soy sauce, onions, chilies, pepper, carrot and mushrooms or the dash of honey. It’s a simple, scrumptious, totally Thai dish.
Feeling hungry? Why not order a Thai take-away online from Dinner2go or EatNow!
