Explore the Essence of Thai Cuisine

General characteristics of Thai cuisine

Considered one of the most popular tourist attractions, Thai cuisine is renowned for its distinctive cooking style and sophisticated blend of herbs, spices, and fresh foods. The common feature of Thai cuisine is the extremely rich flavor, each of the sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors of Thai food are clearly expressed. Thai food when processed is added to many different spices and flavors. Although used but not causing a lot of complexity, each spice and each flavor is used reasonably and accurately, measured, and measured on each dish.

In addition to common spices, Thais also use herbs for dishes such as cloves, saffron, basil, coriander, mint, lemongrass, lemon leaves, chili, ginger, galangal ... to add flavor and make food a functional, healthy food. 

Thai people like the sour and spicy taste so their favorite spices are chili, lemon, and lemongrass. In the characteristic flavor of sour, spicy, salty, and sweet, each Thai dish is very unique. In some countries in the world, Thai cuisine is a combination of colorful quintessence between the East and the West, especially neighboring countries such as India, Indonesia, Myanmar, China ... but still, create different highlights.

Sour & Spicy is main taste of Thai Cuisine

It is a harmonious blend to create dishes that are hot, spicy to tear the tongue, sometimes sour, salty to rich, both beneficial to the digestive system, and refresh the spirit. Besides, the color of the dish also plays an attractive and eye-catching diner with the red of chili, yellow of turmeric, purple of beetroot, green of pineapple leaves, of vegetables...

Thai food is especially rich, not only in taste but also very colorful. It is due to a combination of meat, fish, shrimp ... with spices and many different colors of vegetables. When a Thai dish is placed on the table, diners are always first impressed by its eye-catching, color stimulating taste, making the dish more palatable.

Thai cuisine between regions

Thai cuisine has a common feature, but each region has a unique feature in its flavor and processing. Referring to Thai cuisine, it refers to the old royal cuisine and cuisine of 4 regions of the country, each of which has its distinctive characteristics in the way of processing.

• Northern Thai cuisine is influenced by Myanmar cuisine, usually cooked to medium, low concentration, less spicy, almost not sweet, and sour. In regular meals, sticky rice is a favorite dish with different sauces such as namprik noom, namprik dang, namprik ong ...  The popular soups are Kang hangle, Kang hoh, Kang kae ... and local sausage methods such as casseroles, grilled pork, fried pigs, fried chicken, and accompanying vegetables. Northern people like to eat most is pork and very little seafood.
• Northeastern food is influenced by Laos, sticky rice is also the main dish and is often combined with meat, pork blood, papaya mannequin, grilled fish, grilled chicken ... Northeastern people like fried meat specialties such as Toad meat, lizards, snakes, hamsters, red ants, insects ... Besides, pigs, cows, chickens are also very popular.
• Central food is considered the best combination between regions, loves to eat fragrant rice that Thailand is a famous country. On the dining table, there are usually 3 to 5 dishes such as Kang Phed (Thai red curry), Tom Yum (sour soup), herring, Thai fried eggs, grilled pork ... vegetables and fish sauce.  Central Thai food influenced by royal cooking style should be processed quite sophisticatedly and sophisticatedly; Combining culinary essence from other regions.
• Southern Thai food has coconut, a popular and very popular spice. South Thai cuisine is influenced by Indian and Indonesian, each dish is hotter and spicy than other regions. Popular dishes such as Massaman curry, Kang Liang soup, Kang Tai Pla, Budu sauce, Khao Yam ...

Southern Thai Cuisine

Fresh seafood is also a widely used food such as fish, shrimp, crab, squid, oysters, clams ... Cashews are used a lot to make appetizers or combinations in many dishes. Because of its spicy taste, fresh chili, dried chili, and satori are popular and popular spices.

Some typical Thai dishes

SomTum (Salad of spicy papaya)

This is a strange and wonderful Thai food because some people can eat papaya, some people don't. Garlic, chili, green beans, cherry tomatoes, and chopped raw papayas are ground into flour in the mortar and thus they create an unforgettable spicy-sweet-sour taste. Chefs can add peanuts, dried shrimp, or salt crabs. This dish can clean the intestines, stimulate digestion.

SomTum

Pad Thai (Thai style stir-fried noodles)

Thai cuisine is famous for this dish, which is sold everywhere on the road from Cape Town to Khao San. Chefs flick small, thin noodles or thick noodles (of your choice) in a hot cast iron pan with crispy peas, onions, and eggs before serving. It will be more flavorful if you use condiments such as fish sauce, sugar, chili powder, and ground peanuts.

Pad Thai

Gaeng Daeng (Red Curry)

Made from small pieces of meat, red curry powder, coconut milk and topped with a thinly sliced ​​kaffir lime leaf, this rich, aromatic curry always arouses diners' taste buds. The best is when the meat is soft stewed, this dish can be likened to a beautiful woman: delicate, sweet, and fragrant.

Jenny Tran

Image sources: Internet