Ingredients of Thai Food

Thai cuisine, as a whole, is extremely varied and features many different ingredients and ways of preparing food. Thai food is known for its enthusiastic use of fresh (rather than dried) herbs. Common herbs include cilantro, lemon grass, Thai basils and mint. Some other common flavors in Thai food come from ginger, galangal, turmeric, garlic, soy beans, shallots, white and black peppercorn and, of course, chilies.

Some of Herbs and Spices in Thai Food

Chilies : Chilies are used in all type of Thai cooking such as curries, soup, spicy salads, steamed and fried. It also used in vegetable carving for decoration that you have seen in many traditional Thai dishes, both spur chili and bird chili. This is because they aer colorful, eadible and impart an indispenable flavor to foods.

Bird Chili - It is a staple if Thai Kitchen that is well-known for its very hot taste and strong spicy fragrances. The young chilies are green in color, turning red when mature.

Suan Bird Chili - This variety is smallerthan the bird chili, but it is very hot and has the most pungent of fragrance. When eaten, the chilies cause the ears to become deafen and the eyes to water. This chili is extremely hot.

Noom Chili - This is a fleshy chili and not very hot. It gives off a strong fragrance when roasted. It is usually made into 'noom chili paste' and eaten with crispy pork rind (aka. kabb-moo), a Northern Thai Dish.

Red and Green Spur Chili

Green - This chili is dark green and has a very pungent ordor, hence it is not usually eaten fresh. It is sliced at right angle and pickled in vinegar, and used in fried noodles.

Red - A bright red, fragrant and only slightly hot. It is used in many recipes such as in spicy salad sauce, sour and sweet fried and to blend in chili curry paste to add more color in soup. It is also carved and used for food decoration.

Thai Food

Thai cuisine is the national cuisine of Thailand. Thai cuisine places emphasis on lightly-prepared dishes with strong aromatic components. Thai cuisine is known for being spicy. Balance, detail and variety are important to Thai cooking. Thai food is known for its balance of five fundamental flavors in each dish or the overall meal: hot (spicy), sour, sweet, salty, and (optional) bitter.

Although popularly considered a single cuisine, Thai food would be more accurately described as four regional cuisines corresponding to the four main regions of the country: Northern, Northeastern (or Isan), Central, and Southern, each cuisine sharing similar foods or foods derived from those of neighboring countries and regions: Burma, the Chinese province of Yunnan and Laos to the north, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to the east and Malaysia to the south of Thailand. In addition to these four regional cuisines, there is also the Thai Royal Cuisine which can trace its history back to the palace cuisine of the Ayutthaya kingdom (1351-1767 CE). Its refinement, cooking techniques and its use of ingredients were of great influence to the cuisine of the Central Thai plains.

Thai meals typically consist of either a single dish or rice (khao) with many complementary dishes served concurrently and shared by all. It is customary to serve more dishes than there are guests at a Thai meal.