Speedy chicken pad thai

Chicken Pad Thai recipe

Pad Thai – roughly translated, the name means Thai-style stir-fried noodles - is a bowl of deliciously salty-sweet noodle comfort food that’s won fans all over the world. A much-loved Thai street food, it’s a wonderful combination of rice noodles, eggs, vegetables, bean sprouts and a gently tangy-sweet sauce, usually finished with a scattering of crushed peanuts. Chicken and prawns are popular inclusions, and you’ll see versions such as pork and beef too. Its versatility is just one of the reasons this is such a popular takeaway option at Thai restaurants across Australia, but it’s quick and easy to make at home, too. And in this version, we’ve made it even simpler. This quick stir-fry is a great way to use up leftover cooked chicken, and it’s made with ingredients you can easily find at your local Coles.

This easy Pad Thai is perfect when you are short on time

Looking for a speedy midweek meal? With this recipe, you can have dinner on the table in just 20 minutes. Stir-fries are a great option when you are short on time (another favourite is this 15-minute chicken, broccoli and cashew stir-fry) and here, we’ve made it even easier. You’ve got two options, both of which give a delicious result. When you make one-pan peanut butter chicken – tender chicken thighs baked in a sauce made with crunchy peanut butter and coconut milk – you not only have a fantastic meal for four, but also leftovers that you can put in the fridge or freezer. You can then put a tasty twist on those leftovers by using them in them in our Pad Thai another night. Or you can use shredded meat from a Coles hot roast chicken to make this Pad Thai instead – either way, you’ll end up with a great noodle dinner.

All the other ingredients are things you’ll have in the pantry or can easily buy on your next grocery shop. Pad Thai is always made with dried rice noodles, often called rice stick noodles. The ones most commonly used are a thin, flat noodle about 3-4mm wide, which you can find in the Asian section at the supermarket. The packet instructions may say to boil the noodles, but for this recipe, soaking the noodles in boiling water helps give you a soft, but not mushy, result in the final dish. A traditional Pad Thai usually has tamarind water in the sauce, made from tamarind pulp, and is often made with tiny dried prawns, too, but as this recipe shows, you can still have a delicious stir-fry with a simpler, speedier sauce. That comes from two key ingredients, which you can easily find in the supermarket: fish sauce and kecap manis. Fish sauce is a staple in the cooking of many Asian countries, and adds a mild salty savoury note here, while kecap manis is a sweet, sticky sauce that’s like a cross between soy sauce and molasses. (Another great recipe that uses both of these is Tasia and Gracia’s ginger chicken wings).

In some stir-fries that include eggs, they are cooked first and added back later. But for a Pad Thai, the eggs are scrambled in the pan along with the noodles. It’s part of what creates the distinctive texture and taste, as the cooked egg is mixed evenly through the noodles and picks up some of the delicious slightly charred flavour from the pan where you’ve already cooked the carrot, choy sum and chicken. It’s also one of the reasons this is such a quick dish to make.

You can cook this in a large frying pan or wok. Make sure you allow it to get hot before cooking the carrot and choy sum, and then heat it well again before adding the chicken.

How to make chicken and prawn Pad Thai

Prawn Pad Thai is a popular version of this dish, and you’ll often see it made with a combination of prawns and chicken, too. If you’d like to make this into a prawn stir-fry, use 10-12 medium-sized raw (green) prawns. Add them to the recipe in place of the chicken, and stir-fry until the prawns are just cooked through before adding the noodles and egg. To make a prawn and chicken combination, you can cook the prawns first, and set them aside while cooking the chicken and spring onion. Add the prawns back to the pan before continuing with the noodles and egg. With the prawn and chicken combination, you can adjust the amount of each to suit what you like, or what you have on hand.