Thai condiments to make and keep
Up your culinary game and save time by making these in advance
The eradication of all disorder and spontaneity is a recipe for creativity suppression, at least for me, but that doesn’t mean a little bit of structure is a bad thing.
Coming to terms with the concept of mise en place is key to culinary grace and precision with regards to bringing most Thai dishes together. I say “coming to terms with” because it’s a slog to be too organised. Somewhere between the methodically dull regimentation of tradwife influencers and sheer chaos there is balance. For me that’s advance prep of condiments and flavour-layering seasonings. It’s jars of fragrant oils, pastes, and dried goods sprawled across the counter, balanced haphazardly on top of each other in the fridge. Plus a freezer full of less shelf stable goods such as stocks.
My food blog is called Messy Vegan Cook for a reason, which is to say I’m not always great at subscribing to organisation and also, inexplicably, there’s food on my kitchen ceiling. But when it comes to running supper clubs and writing recipes even I require some order. It’s the difference between my hobbyist and professional hats, I suppose.
Many Thai dishes require a lot of individual components that require more time and effort than you might have energy for in one kitchen session. Take your basic Thai noodle soup. The final dish takes just a few minutes to prepare, but before you can do that time must be spent simmering stock, soaking noodles, frying tofu, crafting meatballs, frying garlic oil, and making the various condiments that are part and parcel with noodle soup culture in Thailand.
Making tiny portions of these items makes little sense when they are not only ubiquitous components of Thai cuisine (with long shelf lives, to boot), but have more broad applications as well. For instance, seasoned oils will perk up all sorts of dishes from salads to mashed potatoes.
This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and is mostly catered towards the kind of foods I prepare. Feel free to comment anything I’ve missed. I’ll update this list with anything that becomes relevant over time.
Where I’ve written separate recipe posts before, the titles include links with more information about how to make each item.
Seasoned oils
Oil carries flavour in ways that water does not (sidebar: it’s physically impossible to fry anything in water). Keep these in your pocket (not literally because stains) for seasoning noodles and salads.
Fried garlic in fragrant garlic oil (gratiem jeow กระเทียมเจียว)
Thinly slice or roughly chop garlic into vaguely uniform bits and fry low and slow. It should take at least five minutes to make. This is a seasoning for finished dishes, rather than a base for building on with additional cooking.
Shallot oil + fried shallots (nam man hom jeow น้ำมันหอมเจียว + hom jeow หอมเจียว)
Those containers and bags of fried shallots you pick up from Asian grocers will be bland and insipid after you’ve learned to make your own. Plus when you fry them yourself you’ll have the added bonus of shallot oil.
Thai chilli jam (nam prik pao น้ำพริกเผา)
Nam prik pao is an integral ingredient in creamy restaurant style tom yam soup and in various yam style salad dressings. Pao refers here to a style of cooking, where ingredients are charred over heat, but the making of nam prik pao nowadays sometimes omits this step in favour of deep frying the ingredients instead. This is the method I typically employ as well.
Be sure to reserve any leftover oil, which is super fragrant, from the low and slow frying of shallots, garlic, galangal, and chillies.
The noodle condiment set
Any purveyor of noodle soups in Thailand will have at minimum a version of one of these 3 seasonings. Thais believe people should be able to adjust flavours to suit their individual palates, so we’ve got toasted chilli powder for spiciness, chilli vinegar for sourness, and prik nam plaa for added salt. Additionally, there would be sugar to add sweetness.
Toasted chilli powder (prik bon พริกป่น)
For most people this one might be easier to buy rather than make. For the sake of your respiratory system, you’ll want outdoor space to slowly toast dried chillies. Even in a space as well ventilated as the outdoors, I still find myself reaching for a PM 2.5 face mask.
Chilli vinegar (nam som prik dong น้ำส้มพริกดอง / prik nam som พริกน้ำส้ม)
Vinegar soaked chillies is a condiment I am rarely without. At its most basic, this preparation requires no more than distilled vinegar and chillies. You can slice them or blitz everything together with a blender. Look for a Thai brand of vinegar if you can, with around 5% acidity.
Chillies soaked in vegan fish sauce (prik nam plaa พริกน้ำปลา)
Also called nam plaa prik, at its most basic this condiment is little more than Thai chillies soaked in fish sauce. The addition of lime juice is quite popular, and some will also add shallots and garlic.
If you can’t source a good vegan fish sauce, use light Thai soy sauce with some added salt. See my post about different types of Thai soy sauces.
The rest
Toasted (fried) peanuts (tua li song tod ถั่วลิสงทอด)
Most Thai cookbooks call for the use of unsalted roasted peanuts, but don’t include recipes for making them yourself. The way I learned to prepare peanuts in Thailand is by deep frying rather than oven roasting. You can use an oven or air fryer if you’d prefer.
If you have previously used oil then use it for frying peanuts or any other nuts. This is because frying nuts thickens the oil, making it mostly useless for frying anything else.
If your peanuts have skins, peel a few away so you can more easily ascertain the overall done-ness of the batch while frying.
Heat vegetable/sunflower/peanut/rapeseed oil to medium heat in a wok (use enough to cover the nuts). Add the peanuts and cook, stirring from time to time, until lightly browned (approximately 5-10 minutes).
Use a spider strainer to remove the peanuts from the oil onto a plate lined with kitchen roll to drain and cool.
Store in an air tight jar and chop or pound them for recipes as needed.
Tamarind water (nam makaam piak น้ํามะขามเปียก)
This is a common ingredient for adding sour notes to many Thai dishes and is a requirement for pad thai. The tamarind concentrate or tamarind paste you can buy in jars just aren’t great. They’re inconsistent and many lose the inherent fruitiness and acidity of tamarind, so I prefer to make my own. It’s easy and you can freeze anything you don’t use.
Basic red curry paste (prik gaeng kua พริกแกงคั่ว)
In the same way as Italians have more than one tomato sauce recipe in their pockets, there isn’t just one type of red curry paste. I include this in my list because kua curry paste is the most basic of red curry pastes, and it’s the one others are built upon. This curry paste doesn’t contain any dried spices like cumin or coriander seeds. When I want to make nam prik gaeng pet I add some toasted ground coriander and cumin seeds, along with white (or sometimes black) peppercorns, to the kua curry paste that’s almost always in my fridge.
If you want to know more, you can also read my post about the similarities and differences between Thai curry pastes.
Oh, and a PSA: any time you see a recipe for red or green Thai curry or curry paste that includes fresh coriander/cilantro, citrus, and/or ginger, move on.
Coriander root, garlic, and peppercorn paste (sam gleur สามเกลอ)
This trio is as important in Thai cuisine as that of lemongrass, galangal, and lime leaf for tom yam soup. Used for layering flavours in dishes ranging from fried dishes grilled (mock) meats to sweet and salty snacks, you’ll find these ingredients at the foundation of many Thai recipes. The ratios of each ingredient are dependent on the taste of the person making it, but generally I aim for about 1 tablespoon each of chopped coriander root (if you can’t find it, use a slightly larger quantity of coriander stems) and chopped garlic pounded with ½ tablespoon of white or black peppercorns (or a combination). Freeze it in small portions and you can use it as needed.
Rub it on tofu or meat analogues before grilling or frying (e.g. moo ping). Blend it with Omnipork or another vegan pork mince to make meatballs for soup and congee. Fry it before adding ingredients for complex stocks (e.g. pa lo).
Noodle soup stock (nam sup น้ำซุป)
Nothing beats a good stock and if, like me, you eat at least a few bowls of noodles each week then it’s worth the effort. My recipe is a guideline, but I wing it most of the time. If you’ve got an Instant Pot, chuck everything in and slow cook for a reliable stock.