Thai Rice Varieties

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 is cooked in a rice cooker, similar to a pressure cooker, then placed in a frying pan where eggs, vegetables such as spring onion, meat or fish are added. It is then served with a slice of lime and a dash of light soy sauce. The dish is usually eaten as a main course.
2. Steamed Rice - this is simple, tasty and the healthiest option. The rice, whether it is brown, jasmine or plain white, is simply cooked in a rice cooker and used to accompany dishes.
3. Sticky Rice - can be found in supermarkets pre-cooked and on street stalls already cooked and wrapped in green pandan leaves. The rice is also used to cook sweet dishes such as mango sticky rice, where coconut milk, sweet fresh mango and granulated or palm sugar are added. This is a popular desert amongst Thais.

The Essential Flavours of Thai Cuisine

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 is almost unbearable but after having time to cool down, the addictive nature of chillies makes you want it all over again.

It is not only rice and curry dishes which are sold in Thailand. Noodles, many different type of fish dishes, spicy salads (papaya salad), sticky rice and fried chicken or fish balls are available. Having the right blend of ingredients is highly important and one which the budding DIY chef may get wrong. Replicating a Thai dish is an art and it’s usually easier and cheaper to go and buy it.

To find the correct blend of Thai ingredients, all of which encompass the five flavours, is difficult. Tourists who have been to Thailand will never experience the right taste again, unless they go back there for the addictive nature of the cuisine.

Using Garlic the Thai Way

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, especially spicy salads (Yam), is to simply peel the cloves and add them to the dish whole. Thai people have no problems with eating whole cloves of garlic in one mouthful, even when it is raw.

As a Covering:
Several Thai dishes, such as Plachon Loue Sawai (a type of deep fried fish with a spicy, sour covering) uses chucks of garlic as part of the coating over the food. Usually it will be coarsely chopped (including the skin) and mixed with chopped onion, chopped chillies, and finely chopped lemongrass. This creates a spicy yet sour mixture, which is sprinkled over the dish before cooking.

As we can see, Thai cooking uses garlic in more innovative ways than we use it in the west, where we simply add a small quantity of chopped garlic to a dish to give it a little flavour. In Thailand, many dishes feature the full flavour of the garlic, which seems to offset the spicy taste of chillies perfectly.

Another Rick Stein Recipe Added

Rick Stein's Hainanese Chicken Rice Recipe

In Rick's own words: "This chicken rice, like babi guling, the slow-roasted pig from Bali, is a dish I would cross continents for. It appears in various forms all over the Far East, especially Malaysia and Singapore. There are people who wouldn’t let a day go by without a plate of chicken rice, and I can perfectly understand why. It’s the moistness of the chicken that gets to you; that and the texture of the rice, made silky by first being fried in some of the chicken fat from the cavity of the bird."

View this delicious recipe...

New Rick Stein Thai Recipe Added

Rick Stein's Beef Massaman Curry

In Rick's own words: "I found this curry at the hotel I was staying at during filming, the Royal Orchid Sheraton on the Chao Phraya river in the centre of Bangkok. The Thai restaurant there, called Thara Thong, was unexpectedly good, and I say this because you don’t usually expect to find a really good restaurant in a giant hotel catering for international conferences. The chef was very much a home-style cook specializing in royal Thai cuisine, albeit with a no-nonsense head-chef demeanour about her. The mussaman curry is the Thai version of the Muslim curries of northern India, made really special by the use of fish sauce, shrimp paste, lemongrass and palm sugar, but the element I find beguiling is the black cardamom, which gives the curry a delightfully smoky flavour."

View this delicious recipe ...

Rick Stein lists Thai Food Online as the place to get your Thai ingredients

Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey is an epic culinary journey along rivers, through jungles and around coastlines, avoiding the beaten track and tourist hot-spots, in search of the authentic food of Southeast Asia. Along the way, Rick visits traditional family-run restaurants, street vendors, floating markets, night markets, fishing villages, and the local cinnamon and rice farmers to learn about the authentic food of the Far East, and to sample the delicious spectrum of exotic flavours.

Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey
In this accompanying book to the major BBC series, Rick shares his favourite recipes and some well-known classic dishes inspired by the fragrant ingredients and recipes he sampled along his way.

What’s more, thai-food-online.co.uk has been listed as the recommended suppliers to get authentic and fresh Thai ingredients in the UK. We will soon be adding some of his authentic and delicious recipes to our website, so keep an eye out for them.
In essence this is a great companion to the BBC2 television series, and with 150 beautifully presented recipes the book promises to be one of Rick Stein's best to date. This book is a must for lovers of Thai and Asian food who enjoy the smells of kaffir lime and lemongrass wafting through their homes.

Thai Sausage Recipe

Perfect for barbeques, these Thai sausages originally from the north-eastern area of Issan bring a unique, fragrant taste.

It can be a meal in itself as the combination of pork and sticky rice is quite rich, and delicious!

If you don’t fancy making a traditional Thai sausages as piping the sausage into it’s casing can be quite a tricky (and messy!) job, you can also make meat patties or small burgers with this recipe.

Thai Sausages (Sai Grog)
Ingredients for Thai sausages (for four people):
Minced Pork (150g)
Sticky Rice (½ Cup)
Galangal (50gms)
Lemongrass (50gms)
Thai Garlic (5 cloves)
Thai Coriander Roots (3)
Thai Green Chillies (5)
Kaffir Lime Leaves (4)
Thai White Pepper (½ tablespoon)
Fish Sauce (2 tablespoons)
MSG (1 teaspoon - optional)
Salt (1 teaspoon)

Cooking Time: About 2 hours.
Method:Cook the sticky rice by soaking it in hot water for about an hour, and then steaming it in a Thai rice steamer for 10-15 minutes. Then let it cool down.Pulverise the garlic using a pestle and mortar.Mix all the ingredients including the minced pork thoroughly. Use a food processer if required. Leave the mixture at room temperature overnight.If you are making traditional sausages, pipe it into the sausage skin. You can also make small meat patties/hamburgers with the mixture, if you don’t want to bother with making sausages.Can be either cooked in the oven or barbequed for about 20-25 minutes