Pad thai

Pad thai is stir-fried rice noodles, described by Thai embassies as the country's national dish. In 2022 the word entered the online Oxford dictionary. In the classic recipe, rice noodles are stir-fried with egg, tofu and mung bean sprouts in a sauce of tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce.

In the traditional central Thai recipe, guay tiew rice noodles are fried with egg, Chinese chives, mung bean sprouts, firm yellow tofu, pickled radish, dried shrimp, dried red chilli and red onion in pork lard. The dish is dressed with a three-flavour sauce of tamarind paste, palm sugar and fish sauce and served with roasted peanuts and lime.

The dish was created in the 1930s, when Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram led the government, and was promoted as part of a national project meant to unite the Thai people. According to tradition, Phibun's housekeeper invented it. It was first called guay tiew pad thai, stir-fried Thai noodles; the word guay tiew comes from Teochew, and rice noodles were brought to Siam by Chinese immigrants. Mi phat Korat may also have influenced the recipe.

On the eastern coast cooks make pad thai sen chan, with thinner sen chan rice noodles and a gravy of blue crab and pork belly.

Why it matters to you. Classic pad thai contains egg, peanuts, shrimp and fish sauce, and in the EU all of these are allergens that must be highlighted in the ingredients.