23 Traditional Thai Dishes You Should Know About

When you think about Chinese takeout food, it's usually from the perspective of wondering whether it's authentically Chinese. The answer is no, not really. But that isn't meant to be a diss — American Chinese food is a proud tradition developed by hard-working immigrants.

Thai food in the United States, we're happy to report, is a bit more representative of what you'd find in Thailand. Yes, there are Thai restaurants selling General Tso's chicken and the like, but generally, your local Thai restaurant is serving up traditional Thai dishes. And then there's the question of authenticity. What is authentic Thai food? Well, that depends on your personal perspective. Thai cuisine is a melting pot, with many dishes borrowed from Chinese, Laotian, Burmese, Cambodian, Malaysian, and other cuisines. There's also the curious case of pad Thai, a dish that didn't formally exist until the 1930s.

We recommend you put these issues to the side and focus on all that Thai food has to offer. Those unfamiliar with Thai food may want to get their feet wet with pad Thai or spicy-sweet Panang curry. Those more familiar with the cuisine might want to go on a deeper dive and explore the spicy, fiery foods of the Isan region and Northern Thailand. No matter your experience level, though, there's something for everyone.

Thailand sits at a sort of culinary crossroads, and one of Thai cuisine's most famous curries is named after an island off the coast of Malaysia — Penang. While there's some debate about whether Panang (or Penang) curry originated in Thailand, there's no debating its popularity.

Panang curry gets its signature flavor from the incorporation of peanuts into red curry paste. Other ingredients in the curry paste include chiles, lemongrass, cumin, and lime leaves. Typically, Panang curry paste uses fewer chiles than red curry paste. The addition of coconut milk makes this curry sweeter and creamier than red curry.

Chicken is the default protein for Panang curry, but most Thai restaurants give you the option of choosing tofu, beef, or seafood. This curry is typically served in a deep plate or shallow bowl with a small bowl of jasmine rice on the side. Although Asian cuisines are commonly associated with chopsticks, most people in Thailand eat their curry with a fork and spoon. In fact, only noodle dishes are typically eaten with chopsticks in Thailand. The proper way to eat Panang curry starts with spreading your rice out on a plate. Then, you scoop individual bites of curry onto a small portion of rice and eat the entire bite in one spoonful.

Most people are drawn to Thai cuisine because of its reputation for hearty, carb-driven dishes. Green papaya salad ("som tum") is an explosion of brightness that couldn't be further from this reputation. Great on its own, green papaya salad is ideal alongside noodle and stir-fry dishes.

While other countries in Southeast Asia like Cambodia and Laos also have a signature green papaya salad, the Thai version is arguably the most approachable, and therefore, the most popular. For example, the Laotian version features a fermented fish paste, which can be more of an acquired taste. Typical ingredients in a traditional Thai papaya salad include green papaya, carrots, long beans, peanuts, lime juice, palm sugar, and fish sauce.

Many modern chefs have put their own spin on this traditional Thai dish, and one of the more notable green papaya salads is from Leah Cohen, owner of Pig & Khao in New York City. Inspired by a papaya salad she had in Vietnam, Cohen's version includes fried taro chips that give the salad a neat textural contrast.

Traditional fried rice dishes are common in many Asian countries and Thailand is no exception. "Khao pad" is the Thai term for fried rice, and it can be found at just about every street vendor and restaurant in Thailand. Ingredients like jasmine rice, Thai basil, cilantro, fish sauce, and Thais chiles differentiate khao pao from other types of fried rice. Beyond that, just about anything is fair game in spicy Thai fried rice.

One popular version of khao pad includes the spicy Thai condiment known as nam prik, which is a combination of fish sauce and ground Thai chiles. Khao pad saporot is another popular version that adds pineapple and meat or seafood. It's also common to find curry sauce, sausages, and all manner of fermented foods in khao pad.

Cooking khao pad is similar to making other types of fried rice. First, it's good to have cooked rice that's a day or two old. Also, you should cook down your meats, aromatics, and vegetables before adding your sauces. After adding your rice and cooking it until hot, you can add final seasonings like lime juice and fresh cilantro.

Made with coconut milk, fresh chiles, and curry paste, green curry ("geang keow wan") is one of the most popular culinary exports of Thailand. As with pad Thai, the formal creation of Thai green curry didn't happen until relatively recently. According to National Geographic, the first Thai cookbooks were written in the 1890s, and a recipe for green chili didn't appear until a recipe book that was published in 1926. This is a much different story from massaman curry, which is known to be more than 300 years old.

The relative newness of Thai green curry isn't surprising given the fact that the ingredients to make it weren't available in Thailand until Western colonialism. Chiles were brought to Thailand from South America in the late 1600s by Portuguese traders. While coconuts were used to make desserts for hundreds of years, they weren't used to make savory dishes until interactions with Malay, Persian, and Indian cuisines. Before this, Thai cooks used water to make curries. Furthermore, the use of white pepper, ground cumin, and ground coriander in green curry also suggests a strong Indian influence on green curry.

As with most curries, any recipe for green curry is easily modified, yet very forgiving. For example, many recipes call for fresh cilantro, but in Thailand, cilantro leaves are never used in green curry, according to National Geographic. Nevertheless, many Western versions of green chili paste include cilantro leaves.

In the Isan region, sticky rice is life. Most people from the region either grow up in a family of rice farmers or have worked in the fields. Understandably, this type of rice is a culinary staple. Not only is it prolific in the region, but it's also very portable, easily reheated, filling, and contains more energy than plain white rice. It's also an essential contrast to the spicy, sour, and funky flavors that are common in Thai cuisine.

One popular preparation called "khao gee" involves wrapping sticky rice around skewers in elliptical balls and grilling it. After an initial grilling, the rice balls are basted with a coating of egg. The result is a starchy treat with a range of different textures. In Isan, khao gee is commonly made as a winter comfort food, according to the Michelin Guide.

If you are going to make sticky rice at home, you should know that it takes time. After being rinsed, sticky rice should be soaked for at least two hours — but usually, it's soaked overnight before being cooked. You should also consider making sticky rice in a steamer because it gives the perfect balance between chewy and sticky.

Thailand is a coastal country and many of its dishes involve fish. Thai fish cakes called "tod mun pla" can be found everywhere in Thailand and are typically sold by street vendors and restaurants. They are easy to make with firm white fish and typically incorporate red curry paste.

The tricky part about making seafood cakes is preventing them from falling apart. A common way to keep crab cakes from falling apart is to chill them before they are cooked, and this technique can also be applied to tod mun pla. After you have formed patties made of ground fish meat, vegetables, seasonings, and bread crumbs, place them in the fridge for one to three hours. Alternatively, you could chill your mixture before forming the patties. This not only helps to keep your fish cakes from falling apart, but it's also easier to handle your mixture. When it comes to forming the patties, take a page out of one celebrity chef's playbook: Ina Garten uses an ice cream scoop to form perfectly even fish cakes.

There are a lot of hot days in tropical Thailand, and the last thing you'd probably want on a sweltering day is a bowl of steaming hot soup. But sometimes, a soup is so good you'd do anything to eat it. Enter the Thai tradition of "dry noodle soups." Restaurants and street vendors in the country commonly serve noodle soups with the broth reserved or served on the side. For the uninitiated, so-called dry noodle dishes ("kuai-tiao haeng") somewhat resemble pasta dishes, but without sauce. It is common for people to put condiments on their dry noodles.

A great example of this dish is the dry crab noodle soup ("ba mii pu") at the Thai noodle bar Soothr in New York City. Egg noodles are dressed with thick, sticky black soy sauce and topped with a ring of roasted pork that lines the bowl. A pile of crab meat sits atop the noodles in the middle of the bowl. The dish is garnished with sliced Thai chiles, a lime wedge, and crushed peanuts.

Kai jeow is often referred to as a Thai-style omelet, but calling this crispy, fluffy egg cloud an omelet would suggest it's a breakfast dish. Thai people eat kai jeow any time of day, and it's usually served atop a bed of rice. It's also served alongside sour and spicy dishes as a kind of palate cleanser. While it's commonly served plain, you can find versions that incorporate different fillings.

If you're looking to make kai jeow, however, it may help to think of it as an omelet after all. If you want to add filings, you should stay away from a few filings that should never be put in an omelet. Fruits, vegetables, and produce with a lot of moisture, like mushrooms or tomatoes, should be cooked down a bit before being added in. Also, sauces like ketchup or pesto are best as toppings, not fillings. And it's best to stick to one or two fillings. A good omelet — or a good kai jeow in this case — is all about simplicity.

Also spelled pad krapow moo, the name of this dish says most of what you need to know: Pad (stir-fry), krapow (Thai holy basil), and moo (pork). Pad kra pao moo is one of Thailand's most popular dishes, given its easy preparation and blend of sweet, salty, and spicy flavors. As the name suggests, it relies heavily on the anise and cinnamon flavors of Thai basil, with fish sauce and sweet and light soy sauces assisting in the heavy lifting.

It's a quick-cooking dish where the garlic and chiles are quickly stir-fried to activate them before adding the pork to the wok. Soy, sugar, fish sauce, and a healthy amount of basil finish the dish. You'll frequently find pad kra pao moo served with jasmine rice, topped with a fried chicken egg, and finished with even more freshly chopped basil.

Khao man gai is another popular Thai street food. Sometimes called Hainan chicken, this Chinese-origin dish exists in varying iterations across a broad swath of Southeast Asian countries. In Thailand, it's known as "rice fat chicken." If only it were that simple, as the dish has complex flavors that the modesty of its name.

The chicken is pretty straightforward, as it's poached in stock or water that cooks flavor with cilantro stalks, pandan, and ginger. The resulting broth is used to both cook the rice and to make a soup of gourd or winter melon, cilantro, soy, and scallions. The fatty rice portion of the name comes from cooking rice with chicken fat and sesame oil-browned garlic, which gives the rice a luxurious richness before finishing in the poaching liquid, which lends the flavor of the aromatics from the original cooking. The last component is a vinegary sauce of ginger, soy, fermented yellow bean paste, and chiles.

A bowl of peanuts or stale cheese puffs loses its luster after seeing Suea Rong Hai recommended as a snack with beer. Also known as Crying Tiger, the dish originated in Northeast Thailand before gaining popularity across the country. As a name, Crying Tiger has a murky background based on lore. One version says the dish is made from meat so tough that a tiger will cry because it can't eat it. Another says the chiles in the dish bring tears to said tiger's eyes. Whatever the truth of its origins is, suea rong hai is a sweet, tart, salty, and spicy snack.

The dish frequently calls for brisket or flank steak, which marinates in sugar and soy or oyster sauce before grilling. After grilling and thin-slicing the meat, cooks serve it with a tamarind-heavy chile sauce that balances sweetness, tartness, and heat for dipping. An obligatory pile of sticky rice makes the perfect accompaniment.