Food in Thailand

Thailand is a country that is best being explored with all your senses - specially your tastebuds though! Because Thai people love their food. And if you have an adventurous tongue, then you'll appreciate the diversity that Thai food has to offer too.

The most popular Thai dishes
Some of the most favourite dishes among foreign visitors to Thailand are Pad Thai (fried noodles), Tom Yam Kung (a sour-spicy shrimp soup), Tom Ka Gai (a chicken curry with coconut milk) and the Massaman Curry (a speciality from southern Thailand).

Vegetarian Dishes

Ingredients of Thai Cuisine
The probably most noticable ingredient of Thai cooking is: chili. Even though it's not an original Thai ingredient - it has just been introduced to Thailand a couple of hundred years ago by Portugese traders who brought it from South America - it's hard to imagine Thai cooking without chillis nowadays.

Fortunately for you, most Thai people nowadays know that Westerners prefer a milder taste and often have a hard time dealing with original Thai spiciness and will prepare dishes "mai ped" (not spicy) if cooking for European or American visitors.

Coconut milk is another popular ingredient. It's being made by pressing with flesh of coconuts with water, and gives a meal a nice, mild, soft, round note that counterbalances the spiciness.

Lemongrass is also a commonly used ingredient because it makes a dish taste pleasantly fresh. Different sorts of herbs like Thai basilicum, ginger, galangal, tumeric and cilantro are also commonly used. Note that in Thai cuisine, herbs are almost always used fresh, not dried. This is partly because fresh herbs tend to cool the body down in comparison to dried herbs, which often have "heating properties".

Eating in Thailand: A Shared Experience
There is a distinct difference between the eating habits of Thai people and people from European or American descent. Western people tend to order separate dishes, even when eating together. Thai people on the other hand order several dishes which will then be positioned in the middle of the table. Everybody gets his own plate of rice, and then everybody eats from these foodladen plates. It is not common to load your own food on your own table. Instead, you always take another spoonful from the shared plate, mix it with some rice, and eat it, and take another spoonful from the shared plates. Loading up food on your on plate is considered impolite for Thai people.

Vegetarian Food in Thailand?
Many people are under the impression that Thailand is a country where there are lots of vegetarians. However, this is not the case. Even most vegetarian dishes (like fried mixed vegetables) are prepared with either fish sauce or oyster sauce (both of which are made from either fermented fish or oyster essence). If you communicate that you are vegetarian however, they will prepare vegetarian food for you, but you should then learn to communicate that in Thai before arriving in Thailand.

Beancurd is most often also just another condiment in a dish, and seldom the main ingredient. Even though it is commonly used in Thailand, it most often is just added to a dish that contains meat for bigger variety.

Food in Thailand

Ramin Assemi loves Thai food and Thai culture - if you plan to visit Thailand, be free to contact him for travel advice. He's always glad to share his experiences with other visitors to the land of smiles.

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