Thai Food Online

Oliang Coffee Mix (454 g) by Pantai The unique Thai coffee drink known as "oliang" is a blend of coffee, sesame and corn served over ice. Oliang preparation is a unique process and you can see particular Thai coffee street vendors in Thailand doing it so fast you'd think they can do it with eyes shut. Thai Coffee Preparation: What You Need (in addition to the coffee). 1. One stainless muslin filter 2. Two small saucepans or extra-wide cups with handles 3. One container full of boiling water Step 1. Place 2 tablespoons of coffee in stainless muslin filter (filter is seen below in his left hand). Position the filter over saucepan or wide cup and pour about 10 oz boiling water through filter. Then lift the filter, let drain and quickly move filter so it's over another saucepan or wide cup. Step 2. Pour the liquid coffee back through filter and into saucepan. Then lift the filter, let drain and quickly move filter so it's over the other saucepan or wide c...

One of the secrets to Asian cooking outside of Asia is that the freshest, most authentic Japanese ingredients are used to make the best meals possible. Thai foods are known worldwide for their diversity of ingredients, complex flavor, delicate and intricate spiciness and fabulous fragrance. Many Thai and Japanese restaurants get business off the street on their food’s aroma alone. In cities such as New York, London and Frankfurt Asian food is incredibly popular and growing in demand. Weekend workshops in all major cities in the western world are available to those who want to learn to make the most popular Asian foods. What most of these workshops lack is high quality, authentic ingredients! Thai and Japanese foods, while distinctly different, do share many of the same fresh herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables that simply aren’t grown in the western world. To find ingredients isn’t easy. The international foods aisles in most supermarkets do have basics, but can’t possibly stock ...

What do we know about curry? Ask any foreigner of Western origin this question and the standard answer will be along the lines of: “It’s from India and it’s really spicy.” While the cuisine of Southeast Asia does lend a degree of inspiration from India, their adaptation of this globally popular dish is breath-taking and utterly mouth-watering. With coconut palms adorning just about every beach front and garden from north to south, the creamy juice of coconuts have become a great part of curry preparation here. When arriving for the first time in Thailand, the incredible selection of delicious curries can very much be the portal through which the unaccustomed palate can travel to the enjoyment of the rest of Thai cuisine ! So, what exactly does this mean? To be fair, while the menu of Southeast Asia is perhaps the most interesting, complex, fresh and colorful cuisine in the world, many people from abroad struggle with the unique and often pungent flavors typical of this food. The widesp...

If you’ve been to Asia, you will know that the Eastern culture and cuisine is rice-crazy. There is no meal in the day that is not in some way complimented with a rice serving, be it breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert. This can make those untraveled of us wonder at just how interesting Asian cuisine can possibly be. Preliminary Internet-based searches of the kind of culinary experience we can expect from an adventure into the East don’t even touch on the sheer variety of rice types and preparation methods used in this beautiful destination. And so, this blog endeavors to take a brief journey in the white haze of the Eastern rice craze. First and foremost, each and every continent has its staple food. North America has corn, Russia has potatoes, South Africa has wheat and Asia has rice. Of course, with the sophistication and expansion of global trade, these definitions are becoming somewhat less distinct in the rest of the world, but in Asia and Thailand? Rice is most undeniably the st...

So you are familiar with typical Thai food such as noodles, green curry and rice dishes, but what about drinks? Non alcoholic Thai drinks within Thailand are refreshing and often sweet. The following provides some examples of what the locals typically drink throughout the day, with meals and in the evening to relax. Cold beverages Iced Tea, in Thai the name is 'Cha Yen'. The tea is made with red or black tea leaves. The leaves are boiled and then the mixture is sieved, leaving the leaves behind. To balance the flavours making it more refreshing to drink, additional ingredients are added such as tamarind, orange flavoured blossom water, star anise and sugar. Some Thais also like to add a food colorant to the tea to make it yellow or red. Ice is then added and sometimes part blended in. Lime Ice Tea. This is similar to the basic ice tea, however, fresh lime and often mint is also added. Iced coffee can be found everywhere from local street vendors to upmarket coffee shops. The c...

When strolling through Thai markets or supermarkets passing the fruit section, you may notice an unfamiliar somewhat pungent smell. This is the unusual aroma of Durian . Appearance: In its uncut form, it can be recognized by its brownish green thorn like tough skin. Once opened, the flesh is typically a pale yellow or cream colour, but some species of the 'King Fruits', as it is locally nicknamed, can be red or bright yellow. Taste and Texture: The fruit is often referred to as tasting like a creamy almond custard. Upon eating the fruit, you will notice that it is soft, smooth and has no juice. Many also like to eat it due to its nutritional value as it is high in protein and carbohydrates. Uses: Durian fruit can be eaten raw just like any other fruit. It is common in Thailand for it to be mixed with pumpkin and transformed into a paste. The paste is a dark brunt orange colour and is sold in tubes. It is then used as fillings for foods such as moon cakes, cakes and biscuits. W...

As craters are to the moon, so the delightful dish Som Tam is ubiquitous to northern Thai cuisine. Just about every street vendor, open air market and restaurant serves Som Tam and if they don’t, they can direct you to the nearest place that does, which is generally less than five minutes walk away, regardless of where in northern Thailand you are! Otherwise known to foreigners as ‘Papaya pok pok’ owing to the sound its preparation with a pestle and mortar makes, Som Tam is a delicious crunchy salad made from green beans, tomato, dried shrimp, garlic, fresh lime juice, Thai bird chilies , carrots, roasted peanuts and green (unripe) and julienne-style papaya fruit (paw paw). Owing to its incredibly popularity amongst the locals and foreigners alike, there are fresh food vendors dealing in Som Tam to be found in every single market-place, be it open-air or indoors; during the day or nighttime. Half the fun of enjoying Som Tam is watching its preparation! It’s appropriate nickname ‘Papa...

Welcome to all those wishing they were somewhere else! - Thailand is one of the most popular destinations for people in the UK and nearly everyone who has visited the land of smiles has been left with a very special connection with the Thai people and their culture. Returning from such a wonderful, amazing place can leave you feeling a little empty and disillusioned. But there is a quick fix. With the UK Thai festival season in full swing there are lots of opportunities to experience, once again, the wonderful foods, music and cultures of Thailand. With over 30,000 Thai Nationals living in the UK it is hardly surprising that there is a healthy Thai Events calendar and their popularity is growing year on year. To experience the Thai culture in the UK you simply need to know where to go and when. Taste of Thai is a website in the UK which has details of all of the Thai events in the UK as well as contact details for Thai consulates and some useful links to Thai resources. You can visit t...

Walking through a supermarket in Thailand you will notice there will literally be a full aisle with soy products . They range from dried beans and even milk. They all use the same product but they are prepared and used in different ways. Soy beans have been used in Asia for thousands of years and are actually an oil seed, not a pulse, which they are commonly mistaken for. The beans were once considered to be important in Asian countries such as China, Thailand and Korea as they were called sacred by farmers, who up until 1920 did not use the bean for food but rather for industrial purposes when growing other crops. One form in which soy beans are used and commonly sold throughout Thailand is oil. Soy oil can be found everywhere in the country in large and small supermarkets. The soy beans naturally contain 19% oil, which is extracted by first cracking them and rolling them flat so they take to a flake like form. After being blended and refined, the oil is ready. Leftover flakes are the...

Come dine with me – Celebrity Special After ordering her ingredients from Thai Food Online, Sam Fox serves up a tasty meal and proves that she is more than a pair of crackers! "I did change the face of page three and show that we have brains and personalities and we can do other stuff," says the glamorous glamour model, whose vocal talents have racked up 30 million albums worldwide. After a volatile week Sam is on a mission to unite the group, but it won't be easy with cougar Janice on the prowl. "Janice was really, really rude," says Jeff. "I wasn't," complains Janice, "I was being social." After decades in the biz, Sam knows no celebrity party is complete without… ping pong. "The table tennis was clearly what we lacked this week, it was like we were one big happy family," grins a happy Jeff. The loving vibe continues over dinner and Sam seems to have nailed the evening from her complimentary name tags (Foxy Sam, Calum the Bes...

Spicy and salad are generally two words which are not found in the same sentence. In Thai cooking, the nation’s spicy salad is called som tam, or sometimes som tum . It is derived from Laos to the north of Thailand from a dish called tam mak hoong or the Cambodian version is known as bok l’hong. The salad is made from the unripe core of a papaya using a special tool which takes three strips of the fruit at a time. The end result is spaghetti like noodles of papaya. Thai cuisine typically has four main tastes that are present in nearly all dishes. The heat comes from the chilli, the salty fish sauce, the juice of a lime and to counteract the flavours, palm sugar is also added. What is often served up as a side dish or as an accompaniment to noodles and vegetables, som tam gives a refreshing taste with the zing of some hot chillies. Added peanuts, crab (padaek) or dried shrimp are nearly always found in som tam, but in Isaan the crabs are usually raw, meaning the government tries to...

Traditional international desserts such as ice cream and cakes are sold and served throughout Thailand. Many however, have been given an Asian twist such as ice creams with durian, lime and coconut flavourings and cakes including sponge rolls or buns with pandanus and custard fillings. There are also those that are less known to the West such as Tako, which is made from coconut and has a jelly like texture. The puddings are set in small moulds, which are made from pandanus leaves that fragrance the puddings naturally and make them attractive in their appearance. One Thai dessert that can be found on most Thai menus is sticky rice with mango, which is named 'Khao niao mamuang' in Thai. The rice is cooked and mixed with coconut milk and often sweetened further with palm sugar or granulated sugar. Fresh slices are then added to the rice or placed to the side. Grass jelly, known as 'Chao Kuai' is an interesting looking desert due to it being black in colour. The black jell...

Thai Food Online has been recommended as the place to shop like a ‘Pro Vietnamese’ for fresh Asian ingredients in the popular BBC food magazine, Olive (July 2010 issue). We are pleased to be recommended as an online resource for authentic Asian ingredients yet again. This follows us being recommended by Rick Stein in his new book, Far Eastern Odyssey. Thai Food Online is the only online store where you can purchase such a wide range of fresh authentic Thai herbs, spices, vegetables and fruit .

Constant Contact recognizes Thai Food Online for commitment to best practices in email marketing 24 May 2010 - Thai Food Online, today announced that it has received a 2009 All-Star Award from Constant Contact®, Inc., a leading provider of email marketing, event marketing, and online survey tools for small organizations. Thai Food Online was selected for meeting Constant Contact’s best-practice standards for the use of Email Marketing throughout 2009-2010. Thai Food Online received a 2009 Constant Contact All-Star Award for demonstrating best practices in the effective use of Constant Contact Email Marketing in the following areas: Frequency of campaigns Open rates Bounce rates Click through rates “Our customers work hard to build strong relationships with their customers through email marketing and some, such as Thai Food Online , truly excel in this effort,” said Gail Goodman, CEO, Constant Contact. “We created our All-Star Awards to highlight those customers who are passionately com...

Whereas back at home you would tend to grab a slice of toast, a cup of coffee or maybe some fruit, in Thailand breakfast meals are very similar to those of the rest of the day. Taking a morning stroll throughout Thailand will reveal small family run restaurants and market stalls opening and dishing out bowls of rice and noodle dishes. One of the most common meals eaten in the morning is Khao Tom. Khao Tom is a Thai soup that is made from rice. It is always savoury and often flavoured with vegetables and meats such as pork and sometimes shrimp. Noodle soup is also eaten for breakfast and for other meals throughout the day. The soup is very simple and is usually made with chicken stock, dry noodles, vegetables such as spring onion and contains meat such as pork and chicken. Soups are then flavoured with soy sauce and herbs such as coriander. They do vary slightly depending on the vendor. Another item that is usually eaten for breakfast is Chok, which is a Thai style porridge. Whereas...

Aromatic Prawn Cakes Taken from umawylde.com Uma Wylde's Aromatic Prawn Cakes ( Thod Man Kung ) Ingredients for Thai prawn cakes (for four people): 500g shelled raw prawns 6 cloves Thai garlic 4 kaffir lime leaves 2 red bird eye chillies 2 spring onions 2 tbsp uncooked rice 2 tsp salt ½ litre sunflower oil 2 tbsp cornflour Preparation & Cooking Time: 20 minutes Method: Tip 2 tbsp rice into a frying pan and cook over a medium heat until golden then take off the heat and grind to a powder in a pestal and mortar. Deseed the chillies and tip into a food processor with the garlic, spring onion and kaffir lime leaves and blitz until fine. Now add the raw prawns, the ground rice and 2 tsp salt and blitz until smooth. Turn the prawn mixture onto a board sprinkled with cornflour ...

Thailand is famous for its food. The unique blend of flavours, which abuse the palette, keeps tourists coming back for more. In addition to the spicy curries and flavoursome dishes, there is an obscure, some Westerners say at least, side dish or snack that is sold at Thai local markets. Many areas around Thailand sell insects, which have been deep fried. Typically, it is grasshoppers, crickets, silkworms and bee larvae which are found. At the local markets, there are metal dishes with thousands of insects piled high. They smell fantastic, look weird and yet can be fairly nutritious. It is generally said that the taste is akin to popcorn or prawns. The Thais deep fry them with kaffir lime leaves, garlic and chilli, which transforms the snack into a tasty dish. Normally, insects are fairly bland, that is why the locals cook them with other ingredients, but also they use them as a crunchy addition to soups, especially in Isaan, which is in the north east of Thailand. A typical insect ...

Rice is an ingredient that can be found on every menu within Thailand. However, what many do not realize is there are different varieties that are cooked in different ways. One of the most popular types of rice throughout the country is fragrant jasmine rice. The grains are white in colour and long in shape. Another popular rice that is readily available is sticky rice, which is also named glutinous rice as it is gluten free. This rice is white in colour also and the grains are short in length. The rice has a sweeter taste and is often used in desserts such as mango sticky rice as well as in savoury dishes. Throughout Thailand, rice is accompanied with most dishes and is also eaten in several different ways. For instance, with a curry dish, steamed jasmine rice is typically served. However, with dishes such as fried chicken or pork, sticky rice is preferred. Here is a quick guide to the different ways that rice is cooked: 1. Fried Rice - this is typically made with white rice, it...

‘Ramsay’s Best Restaurant’ is an exciting new series dedicated to celebrating the finest restaurants in the UK. Restaurants nominated by the public will be tested to the highest level by Michelin starred chef Gordon Ramsay and the series will culminate in one culinary hero being crowned ‘Ramsay’s Best Restaurant’. Gordon’s journey will see him travel the length and the breadth of Britain in search of brilliant restaurants that deliver gastronomic perfection and wonderful customer service. He’ll meet restaurant owners who refuse to be daunted by the threat from ubiquitous chains and who are determined to survive the recession on their own terms and with their exceptionally high standards intact. He’ll seek out culinary heroes working in the kitchens and front of house at independent restaurants across the UK whose brilliance deserves to be recognised. Each of the eight heats will focus on a different type of cuisine including Italian, French, Indian and British categories and this year ...

The essential ingredients which set Thai cuisine apart from the rest of the world are the five flavours blended together in each meal. All Thai dishes follow similar rules of having hot (spicy), sweet, sour, salty and bitter flavours. Walk past stalls or markets with curries being made and you smell the distinct ingredients. The aromatic, chilli and rich smells are all blended together to make Thai food incredibly more-ish. In addition to these flavours, Thais have a range of condiments to accompany the already quite spicy dishes. Nam chim or a selection of sauces are served in small containers, which have dried chilli flakes, sweet chilli sauce, nam pla phrik (fish sauce, chopped chilli, lime juice and garlic), sliced chilli in rice vinegar and sugar. Cucumber is found on the sides of a dish, to cool and cleanse the mouth, after eating fairly vicious sounding ingredients. Anyone who has travelled to Thailand or eaten Thai food will understand the flavours being immense. The spiciness ...

Many people find that they have a problem achieving as truly authentic Thai taste when they first try their hand at cooking Thai food. Western cooks are far more conservative that their Thai counterparts, and thus we tend to under flavour our foods, which is simply not the way to achieve proper tasting Thai food. Don’t be shy with the spices If you watch a Thai person cooking, they take a fairly cavalier attitude with herbs and spices. They never measure anything exactly, instead they add these ingredients to their own taste, using their experience of cooking the dish in question. In the west we are used to measuring herbs and spices in small measures, as we tend to add these things to bring subtle flavours to the dish, this is not so in Thailand, where the herbs and spices form the backbone of the flavour. So don’t be conservative with them, always add plenty. Chillies do have a taste Most people presume that chillies are added to a dish to simply make it spicy. This is simply not tru...

Garlic is used as a cooking ingredient all over the world. However, in the Western World we tend to use garlic sparingly, and when we do use it we tend to prepare it quite differently than Thai people do in Thailand. In the west we tend to peel the outer skin from the cloves of garlic, we also chop it finely or squeeze it through a garlic press. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this way of preparing garlic, it must be said that this destroys the flavour somewhat. Thai people would never consider treating their garlic so badly! Smash it Whole: The primary way in which garlic is used in Thai recipes, is as part of the base paste used to flavour the food. The garlic, along with other herbs and spices such as chillies, onion and black pepper will be thrown into a mortar and then ground down to a paste using a pestle. Note, the garlic is thrown in whole, including the skin, with no other preparation. Skin it and Eat it Whole: Another way in which garlic is used in Thai recipes, especiall...

The overall character of Thai food, just the same as any regional food, is governed by the most common herbs and spices used in its preparation. What makes Thai food so tasty is the fact the there are such a wide range of inexpensive, and easily obtained herbs and spices to be found in Thailand. Below we will take a look at the three most commonly used of them, which definitely help to form that great Thai taste. Lemongrass – A very hard grass stalk, with a strong taste of lemon. Thai people add Lemongrass to a dish either smashed down to a paste form in a mortar and pestle, finely chopped, or on 3-6 centimeter lengths. Note that the third form is not eaten, it is simply there to add flavor, leave it in the dish when eating. Basil – An immensely popular herb across the whole of Thailand. Thai basil is a little different than the basil we find in the western world. The leaves are much larger, and the plants are busier. Also, the taste is not quite so strong. Thai folks will use handf...

Let’s face it, in the Western World, our idea of spicy is a pizza with a few jalapenos on top. Many people visiting Thailand, or trying authentic Thai food for the first time, often encounter the burning mouth, running nose and numb lips, that only a really spicy dish can cause. So how do we go about enjoying Thai food without this risk? The simplest way, yet not the best way, is simply to ask for dishes to be prepared without too much chilli. Asking for a dish to be made “Mai Phet” or not hot, is the way to achieve this. However, if you do this, you are missing the true Thai taste, and eating a dish which is a shadow of its proper flavour. Now I will teach you a little secret I have discovered over the past 5 years living in Thailand. The Thai people cheat when it comes to spicy food. They know for a fact that certain things like sugar will kill the burning chilli sensation dead, whilst leaving the taste intact. Watch a Thai person putting condiments into noodle soup, in goes a spoonf...

Most people who have been to Thailand will agree that once you have tasted locally prepared food, then Thai restaurants in the rest of the world pale into insignificance, as the true taste is seldom recreated outside Thailand, but why is this? The reason is glaringly simple if you watch Thai food being prepared anywhere in the country, from a simple street stall to an up market restaurant – fresh ingredients and good preparation. Typically, a person preparing a Thai dish will not use any form of pre-prepared seasoning. Instead they will use a mortar and pestle to grind herbs and spices together, to create the flavouring for the dish. The exception to this is curry paste, which will usually be purchased from a local market, although this has previously been prepared in the same way. In the same way that Thai people pay great attention to the actual preparation of the raw ingredients, they also demand that all food cooked be fresh. Thai people do not stock their fridges, they do not fi...