How NYC’s Best Pad Thai is Made | Made to Order | Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit joins Chef Joel Chidensee Watthanawongwat of Soothr to make his perfect pad thai recipe. Soothr is one of New York City’s hottest Thai restaurants, focusing on Yaowarat cuisine. Learn how Watthanawongwat elevates this traditional Thai street food dish, from the importance of using fish sauce (not soy sauce!) to making his signature egg net.

00:00 Intro
00:39 Soaking the noodles
01:28 Making the sauce
03:31 The egg net
05:05 Cooking the Pad Thai

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[upbeat music] – Hi, I am Joel Watthanawongwat. I am the chef, owner at
Soothr in New York City. Today I will be making my perfect version of Pad Thai. [upbeat music] The main concept of Soothr, we wanna focus on the Yaowarat style food. It’s a combination of Chinese influence with Thai ingredients. We wanted to just open
up a small noodle shop and then after that
everything just blew up. Pad Thai is one of the
most popular noodles here. This thing looks really intricate but it’s actually very easy to make. To get started, I’m just gonna start with the noodles. Pad Thai is all about rice noodles. When we soak it, the texture is still firm and it tastes amazing. I’m gonna give this guy a spa day. At the restaurant, we
actually soak this overnight in a cold water like eight hours. Just because this one is a dry version, you wanna make sure that it’s soft so then when you put it in the wok, it cooks like properly. But if you’re in a rush, you could do it quick,
just use warm water. If you can take the time,
please take the time. If you do a shortcut, you might just have to compromise that quality of the texture. I actually have a batch that I did soak last night. So we have this noodles
that is fully soaked and the texture is amazing. The noodles should just bend, not snap. [upbeat music] What makes the perfect Pad Thai sauce would just be these four
simple ingredients here. We have our shallot, fish
sauce, tamarind paste and table sugar. All of these ingredients play their own important role. You can’t really miss any of this. Alright, I’m just gonna bring this over to the pot and let’s get it cooking. So you wanna caramelize the shallot first, cook it through until
it turns a little brown. This usually takes about
three to five minutes. It brings out the
sweetness from the shallot and the aroma in it. Make sure that you like stir it so it doesn’t get burned. And maybe low heat could be nice too. The flavor of the tamarind
is like the sourness and the tang in the sauce. So this tamarind paste is pre-made but in Thailand they actually use like a real tamarind and squeeze that juice out of it. It’s quite a laborious work. If you making it home,
you should go buy a jar. It’s much easier. I’m going to add in the fish sauce. So the good Pad Thai, you need to have fish sauce. It has to be fish sauce. You cannot use soy sauce. No. The fish sauce gives it
like the salty flavor. We are looking for that
reduced like texture, not too runny. The sugar that we’re adding to the sauce, gives it the sweetness. Palm sugar in Thailand, it’s quite common. I prefer this table sugar
in the Pad Thai sauce than the palm sugar because when I cook the
sauce it’s easier to melt and then dissolve it into the sauce. All of our flavor elements are in here, the sweet, the salty and the tang. I’m just gonna let it
simmer for a few minutes until it gives you that
thicker, reduced texture. This is the consistency
you’re looking for. So it’s still like liquidy, but it’s not super runny like water because the sugar gives
it that syrup texture. Right, we’re gonna let this cool down for a little bit and
it’s gonna get thicker. Now I’m gonna focus on my egg net. [upbeat music] The egg net is actually
pretty much an omelet in that net shape. It’s just gonna be like a design of like lace pattern. At the end, I’m gonna wrap my Pad Thai with the egg net. This is one way of how
we elevate the common street food Pad Thai into like a nicer presentation. So I’m gonna whisk this egg up and what’s important about this is you actually have to
sift this just to ensure that the egg texture is absolutely smooth. And the trick to make the egg net is this squeeze bottle. You have to use this. I like working this with low heat because the egg net is quite intricate. It gets cooked really quickly. Sometimes you just have to do it a couple of times first before you find that right temperature. I like to do this across and then I’m gonna do this way. In Thailand they actually use the whole omelet sheet, but here we like to make it a little bit more creative. So we do it like a lace pattern. This you have to be quite gentle when you push it ’cause it might break. You could actually sometimes
hold it off the heat ’cause the heat still stay with the pan and you still get that nice crust like this one you just like push it just so now like you know your
whole sheet is moving, it’s easier to grab it. And voila! So we are gonna move on
to making the Pad Thai. Let’s get woking. [spirited upbeat music] So now we have to wok to get started on our Pad Thai. Pad Thai means, pat means fry, stir fry in Thai, Thai is Thai. All together Pad Thai means stir fry the Thai way. I got all my ingredients ready. We have our protein, we have shrimps. I have my shrimp ready, peeled, deveined, and butterfly. The reason that we want
a butterfly this open because you know we want it to be cooked nicely on the inside and they look better when they open up. So the chive would add the flavor to it, almost like a garlic
aroma in in your dish. And we also have the Thai
sweet pickled radish. This one also gives
you flavor and texture. It’s sweet and it has a little crunch when you bite into it. It’s really nice. And next we have our bean sprouts here, the classic ingredient. When you bite into it a little crunch with like water. I have my Pad Thai sauce here. It’s all cooled down. And this is the texture that you’re actually looking for. It’s still runny but it still has that thicker texture. I like to put the egg in the Pad Thai just because we want
something to coat the wok. And of course, the main guy here, noodles. This is the noodle that
I soaked from last night. They’re all soft but still the texture is still firm and it doesn’t snap. This is the perfect texture. This wok is a Chinese style wok. So in Thailand when people fry stuff, in small towns, they still
use the charcoal stove to make the Pad Thai. So you get that charred flavor. So when we’re here the charred flavor that we can get it out, it’s from this wok here
with the high heat, that’s how you get the charred flavor. You can use just a regular pan. I think it’s fine too. It’s just gonna maybe like take a little bit longer than the wok. As long as you could get the high heat, that should work just perfectly. It’s smoking now. So I’m gonna put in some oil. Cracking the egg. I think it looks good. Shrimp. Okay, usually we’ll put like seven in. You can lower your heat as well. So you see how quickly this go. I usually do about like
200 grams of noodles. You’re looking for that charred and soft like texture of the noodles. It’s kind of hard to tell by the eyes, but you can feel it with your hands when you touch that. If you don’t cook it properly before you put in the sauce, the sugar will lock your noodles and your noodles will
stop the cooking process. I like doing a lot of tossing just because I don’t want it to be burned or anything gets like overly cooked. The trick is if you have high heat, you have to control your hand. You have to be really quick. But then again, you can lower your heat a little bit if you can’t like go fast with your hand. It works fine as well. So when I put the sauce in, I actually put it on the noodles ’cause if you put it on the rim, the sugar can get burned
and then make sure that you go through it like evenly and smooth it out. So I’m looking for the color. Maybe I’m just gonna add in a little bit more sauce. That’s good. And put in some chive, bean sprouts and a bit of the radish. I just cut the heat after
I put in the vegetables ’cause those will get cooked very quickly. So let’s get it on the plate. When I plate the Pad Thai, I want to like put all
the shrimp on the top. You wanna showcase your nice ingredients and the colors. I’m gonna save a couple of shrimps to put it on the egg net. So I have this egg net ready. So it’s very simple. I’m just gonna wrap it
around the Pad Thai. And also we’re gonna
put the shrimps on top, just so you see more shrimp. Baby bananas, put it here. And also the petals, we
are gonna put it here. This is my favorite part. I love putting lime in the Pad Thai. It’s very typical in
Thailand that like people like to add a little bit more sugar to the Pad Thai and
also their chili flake. And lastly is the crushed peanuts. Everyone loves peanuts. The peanuts add the crunchy texture to it and also the flavor. You know when you bite
into the soft noodles, you have the crunchiness from the peanuts and the spiciness from the chili flake. This is my perfect Pad Thai. So I like squeeze the lime on it. I’m just gonna mix everything all in with this chili flake and the peanuts. This is what you’re looking for. The long noodles. [upbeat music] So good. The noodle, it’s soft, but it’s bouncy. It’s a great texture. The sauce is well absorbed. The taste is amazing. All the flavors, sweet, tangy, peanuts, spicy, everything. It is like flavor bomb. This is everything Pad
Thai is supposed to be. Pad Thai is such a great
dish to make it at home. As long as you get all
your ingredients ready, it’s just simple. It’s worth the time, if you get the right ingredients, you get the right Pad Thai. [spirited music] Should I save you some?