Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- The cooking of Thailand is very much like the cooking of the Philippines or Cambodia or China, at least in terms of the south versus the north.

The southern part of the country has more spices and the northern part of the country has lighter, brighter recipes.

So we're going to start in Southern Thailand with two recipes-- a cumin- coriander fried chicken and also a braised pork dish with cloves and cinnamon.

And then we go to the northern part of Thailand to make larb, which is a minced beef salad, which is light and bright with cilantro, lime juice, and mint.

So stay tuned to Milk Street as we explore Thailand from south to north.

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- Lots of places in the world love their fried chicken besides America.

South Korea is well-known for fried chicken, and so is Thailand.

It's interesting that in the southern part of Thailand, like the southern part of the Philippines, there are a lot more spices.

Lot of Muslim emigration from India to Southern Thailand.

So in the north, in Chiang Mai, where we were a couple of years ago, they did a grilled chicken and served it with a spicy tamarind sauce, but not a lot of spices.

In the south, when they fry chicken, first of all, it's fried, and there are a lot of spices.

It's a little more substantial.

So today we're going to do a Southern-Thai-style fried chicken.

- Well, you know, our southern region is also known for its fried chicken.

And like that recipe, this recipe is typically done with bone-in chicken parts.

For convenience today, we are using boneless chicken thighs, cutting them into strips.

That reduces the marination time, and it makes the cooking go a lot faster, too.

There are three basic steps to this recipe.

We have marination, coating, and frying.

And we are going to be adding a lot of bold flavor to each of those steps.

- Okay.

- And cumin and coriander are the big spices that we're starting with.

So we're going to put the dry skillet on medium heat, and we will add the cumin and coriander to that.

Three tablespoons of cumin and three tablespoons of coriander.

This will take about two to three minutes.

We'll smell it first.

And then as the color just begins to change, we'll get it out of the pan.

All right, see the color just darkening?

- Mm-hmm.

- All right.

So we're going to very quickly transfer this out of the pan, and this will stop the cooking by putting it into a bowl.

So we're adding to that a tablespoon of ground white pepper.

It's got a similar heat pack of black pepper, but it just has a little bit more of a floral edge to the flavor.

- It's cleaner.

- It's cleaner, it's... yes.

It's very distinctive, actually.

We will set that aside until we're ready to use it.

Now we're going to go on and make the liquid portion of our marinade.

We're starting with one egg white.

What the egg white does in the marinade is really interesting.

It doesn't do anything to the chicken while it's marinating, but it helps the coating adhere when we do that later.

We have a quarter-cup of fish sauce and a quarter-cup of water.

The water sort of tempers the saltiness of the fish sauce, and it also gives us a little bit more marinade to work with.

Okay, so I'm going to whisk that together just to loosen up the egg white.

And then we're adding two serrano chilies, which have been chopped, all the seeds-- well, not all the seeds-- some of the seeds left in.

You can leave in as many as you like, obviously.

And this is an entire bunch of cilantro that's also been chopped.

Now we're going to go back to our spice mixture that we just made and take three tablespoons of this and add it in.

So you can see that it's not a very wet marinade.

It's more concentrated in flavor.

So what we have here is two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs.

Each thigh was cut into three strips, and that helps them to absorb the marinade quicker.

And they're going to cook faster, too.

So we're going to cover this and let it refrigerate for 30 minutes to 60 minutes.

Here's something to note-- you don't want to marinate this more than an hour in advance of when you cook it, because it is a very salty marinade, and it can actually cause the chicken to get a little too salty.

So while our chicken marinades, we're going to make a homemade sweet chili sauce.

You could certainly buy this, but it's really great to make it.

It's so easy, and it's nice to know what's in your sauces.

We have a cup of white vinegar.

You could see how simple this is.

- Okay.

- Half a cup of white sugar.

And a quarter-teaspoon salt.

So we're going to bring this to a boil.

We'll stir until the sugar's dissolved, and then once it's boiling, we're going to let it go for ten to 12 minutes to reduce down to about three-quarters of a cup.

That will thicken the texture a little bit.

So this has been boiling for about 12 minutes, and the texture is a little bit thicker.

We're going to take this off the heat now and add the three tablespoons of chili garlic sauce.

Okay, our dipping sauce is ready, and we are almost ready to coat the chicken and fry it.

So, our chicken marinated for 30 minutes.

It absorbed all that intense flavor.

We drained the extra marinade off, and we are now going to scrape off a little bit of the cilantro before we dredge it.

Now, moving on to the dredge for a moment, we have two cups of cornstarch, and we're going to add two entire tablespoons of the white pepper.

And we also have two teaspoons of salt.

So, the chicken has flavor inside from the marinade, it's going to have flavor on the outside, as well.

So we just need to scrape off this excess cilantro because we want the cornstarch to adhere completely around the chicken.

We're going to do a third of the chicken at a time.

So we could shake the bowl, but the cornstarch adheres a little bit differently than flour.

The only thing we need to do different is to give it a good press.

It actually squeaks a little bit.

- I was going to say, was that you or was that the chicken?

Bianca's starting to squeak, I'm a little concerned.

- It could be the shoes, but, no, it's the cornstarch.

All right, so, shake it off lightly and put it right on the rack.

- That looks very promising.

- Doesn't it?

- It does.

- The flavor is just outrageous.

There we go, and then you just go and do the same thing with the next third.

It's been sitting about 15 to 20 minutes, so the coating has a chance to dry out a little bit, which will make it extra-crispy.

- Okay.

- We are using two quarts of peanut oil.

Just reached 350, and that is where we want it for frying.

- It's 351.

- 351?

Well, if you take the thermometer out at 350, that's where it is.

- (laughing): Okay.

- All right, and like the dredging, we're going to fry one-third at a time.

(chicken sizzling) The reason for doing this is, you don't want to overcrowd the pot, for obvious reasons.

You want these to get a nice crispy coating all the way around.

And the more chicken you put in, the more the temperature of the oil drops.

- The temperature of the oil will drop.

So you're actually frying at 325 or some number around that.

You won't... you won't keep it at 350.

That's okay.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- Now, this takes, because we have these little strips of chicken, five minutes to fry.

- Hmm.

- All right, I think we're good.

This looks really nice.

You know, the cornstarch is going to be a light golden color.

(chicken sizzling) It doesn't get as deep, dark brown.

You don't need it to.

(sizzling continues) The texture, though, is exceptionally crispy.

So these are done.

- Mmm.

- So, we have flavor in the marinade, flavor in the coating, and now our third level of flavor is, we're going to take that spice mixture that we reserved from the marinade and sprinkle it over while hot.

And you want to use about a third of that, because we have a third of the chicken, and then we'll use the rest for the other chicken.

- So one of the things we like to do here at Milk Street is add flavor at different times in a recipe.

At the beginning, the marinade, of course, which included the spice mixture.

We fried it, we added the spice mixture again once it came out of the hot oil.

And then there'll be a dipping sauce at the end, so you get three different hits of flavor, which is a good way to get a lot of flavor.

(laughing) - Okay, our oil is back up to 350.

We're going to add another batch, the next third.

So, after these finish, we'll do the last third and then we can eat.

Okay, this is nice.

- Okay.

- I would say this is great for a party, but I don't want to share 'em that much.

- Hands, I think, would be appropriate, you think?

- Yes, so we have the homemade chili sauce we made.

The sweet chili dipping sauce.

Use a little bit of lime if you want, squeeze over.

Yeah, that's my favorite, too.

- We can dispense with the forks.

- Who needs that?

- Who use forks with fried chicken?

- Nobody.

(chicken crunching) - Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

- You can hear the crunch in Tierra del Fuego.

I mean, there's just... it's incredibly thin, crispy-- shatteringly crisp, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Mmm.

This is outstanding.

It's sweet spicy.

- Yes.

- It's not overly spiced.

- Right.

- You know, our goal here at Milk Street is to have easy recipes with big flavors, both of those things, and this, this recipe definitely does it.

So a marinade with fish sauce, egg whites, cilantro, and spice mix, just for half an hour's fine.

This is boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into three parts each.

Fried it up, that's pretty standard.

We used cornstarch instead of flour.

A little bit of spice when it came out of that hot oil and finished it with a chili sauce with vinegar and sugar.

So, our Southern-Thai-style fried chicken is-- I'm not going to say better than the Southern fried chicken, I don't want to upset you-- but it's a great alternative.

It's easier to do, it has big flavor, and we really love it.

- Two thumbs up.

- Yeah.

- I'm sure that most of you have had this spicy minced beef salad called larb.

It's from Laos, it's from Northern Thailand.

Also the Hmong people in North Vietnam also enjoy it.

It's very simple to do, and we thought, well, why not do it here at Milk Street, right?

It makes a lot of sense.

So, take it away.

- Yeah, it's seriously a super-easy salad, and it's my kind of salad because it's mostly beef.

But it is really, really freshened up with a couple of different adjustments that we made to the recipe.

We switched out what rice we use for this topping called khao khua.

It's a toasted rice flour that's usually made with a glutinous rice flour, but here we could just use jasmine rice.

So if you wouldn't mind setting that skillet over medium-low heat for me, and we'll go ahead and throw in two tablespoons of jasmine rice.

Just give it a little shimmy here and there.

What we want to do is, we want to toast this rice off until it is golden-brown, and that should take about six to seven minutes or so.

So, Chris, if you wouldn't mind just keeping an eye on this, I want to move on to the other parts of this recipe, which involve this very potent dressing that we're going to cover everything with.

And that dressing is going to be three tablespoons of lime juice along with two tablespoons of fish sauce.

And that's going to offer a really fantastic savoriness to this dressing.

We're also throwing in half a teaspoon of cracked black pepper, one teaspoon of salt, and, finally, one teaspoon of sugar.

And that balance of salty and sweet makes this dish really pop in a unique way.

So we're going to whisk that to ensure that all of the salt and the sugar dissolves.

How's that rice looking?

- White.

- Be patient.

It's going to take a little bit of time.

- I didn't say I was leaving.

I said... you asked me how it was doing.

- So this dressing is all set.

We'll take a closer look at this later on.

The next part of this involves our aromatics.

Here we have two shallots.

Contrary to what they do in Northern Thailand, we actually mellow out all of our aromatics in that dressing.

So the acid that's in that dressing is going to break down some of that aggression that a lot of the shallot as well as the pepper have when they're raw.

So now that I have this shallot peeled, one thing I'll do is, I'll just cut off a side of this so that way I have a flat surface, and that won't roll around on me nearly as much.

But we'll thinly slice these into rings, and we'll do the same with the other shallot.

So, Chris, now that we have all of our shallots thinly sliced, we're going to do the same thing with our Fresno chili.

Just be sure to cut off the stem first, and then you could go ahead and slice them down into those thin rings.

Now, if you are sensitive to heat, you should definitely cut out the seeds as well as the membrane on the inside, because that's where all the heat lies.

But, otherwise, we're going to leave them in, and I'm going to leave them in today.

- I thought you were going to say, "If you're sensitive to heat, don't eat this.

Don't make this recipe-- have some oatmeal."

- Now, if you do prefer it spicier, for whatever reason, feel free to add in another chili.

So now that we have both of those all set, I'm going to throw them directly into the dressing that we made earlier, so that way they could start breaking down a lot of their more pungent, strong flavors.

Give that a little stir.

Here's a good opportunity to break up some of those shallot rings.

So it looks like that rice is really well toasted.

- Mm-hmm.

- So now we could go ahead and transfer that into our mortar over here, so that way we could get it primed to grind down into a powder.

We do need to let it cool down before we could do that.

Now that we have the rice cooling, if you wouldn't mind cranking the skillet up to medium-high for me.

I'm going to toss in two teaspoons of a neutral oil.

Here, we're working with grapeseed oil.

Once it shimmers, then we could add in our beef.

Now, this is a pound of 85% lean ground beef.

It's going right on in.

And if you wouldn't mind breaking that up for me.

We want that broken down into pretty small pieces.

While you're breaking that down, I'm going to throw in one teaspoon of sugar, as well as half a teaspoon of salt.

We're going to continue cooking this beef down until it is fully cooked.

And that should take about four to five minutes.

At this point, if you wouldn't mind just throwing it into our bowl with the chili-shallot mixture.

- Okay.

- Fantastic.

And give that a stir.

While it's hot, it's still able to take in a lot of the flavor.

While you work on that, I'm going to break down the toasted rice that you made earlier using my mortar and pestle.

I'm just going to let the pestle do most of the job simply by using gravity to break it down into smaller pieces.

And then, from here, I could start working with some elbow grease.

Now, Chris, we're breaking this down until it's a really coarse powder.

We're not looking for something super-fine like flour.

Really something that's going to give us some bites of crunch here and there.

And I say... - I say you're done.

- We're just about there.

So, now that we have that all set, we could go ahead and bring this salad together.

We're going to throw in half of this toasted rice powder here.

We'll save the rest for topping off later on.

Let's add some freshness to the game in the form of one cup of mint, as well as one cup of cilantro.

Now give that a toss for me, Chris.

- It does look very good, and I bet it tastes even better.

- Oh, yeah.

So now that everything is in here covered in that dressing, we're going to let that sit for about five minutes just to let those flavors marry.

Then we could go ahead and eat.

- So there is a technique here which you may not have noticed, which is, we cook the meat first, and then put the dressing or other ingredients on it.

It really tends to keep the meat much more tasty and also doesn't sog it out when it sits in the marinade.

- It keeps all the flavors clean and fresh.

- Fresh.

- So we'll let this sit for another five minutes, and then we could eat.

All of those flavors have come together.

We're going to top this off with the last bit of that toasted rice powder that we created here.

Give us that little extra bit of crunch and a little bit of that nuttiness.

I'm just going to scoop these on top of some butter lettuce that we have here.

And that's another layer of freshness to this dish.

A good crunch.

I'll let you pick first.

- Thank you.

- Awesome.

How's that?

- Mmm.

- Mmm.

- It definitely got heat.

- Mm-hmm.

- So straight from Laos and Northern Thailand, a spicy minced beef dish called spicy beef salad with mint and cilantro.

A few things I really like is using that marinade after cooking, not before, toasting the rice with a little bit of powder, and also some classic ingredients here-- fish sauce, shallots, and lime juice.

So very easy to make, and you could eat it any night of the week.

Sometimes when we travel, we do recipes that everybody knows, like beef noodle soup, for example.

But this is a recipe that's Chinese by way of Thailand.

It's called moo palo.

"Moo" means pork, "palo" means five-spice powder.

But the really interesting thing is, they cook eggs in it.

They take hard-cooked eggs and put them in with the pork.

Sometimes they cook them so long the eggs start to shrink.

But the idea of this sort of sweet-sour braising liquid with the pork, that's what really appealed to us.

It's another way of doing sort of a pork stew-slash-soup.

So that's, that's what got us excited, right?

- That's right, Chris.

This is such a deeply savory stew, but it does have that nice hint of sweetness to kind of cut through the richness of the dish.

So to get started, we're going to make a really flavorful blend here that will be part of our braising liquid.

I have the cilantro stems from one bunch of cilantro.

Now, if you were in Thailand, they might use the roots, but those are hard to find here.

The stems are a great substitute.

They have a ton of flavor.

We have eight cloves of garlic that I've just peeled and smashed.

We have a tablespoon of white peppercorns here, and, Chris, it's really important that you don't buy the pre-ground.

You want to use whole white peppercorns.

And then we have three cloves here.

And we aren't using the five-spice powder.

Those can really kind of vary and we found that sometimes it can make it a little bit muddy and almost overspiced.

So by blending our own spices right in with the cilantro and everything, we thought it was a really nice flavor combo.

Now I'm going to add a third of a cup of fish sauce for that umami flavor we talked about.

And I have six tablespoons of low-sodium soy sauce.

You don't want to use the full-sodium here.

It'll be too salty.

And six tablespoons of water.

So it'll just take about 20 seconds to blend this up.

(blender whirring) Perfect.

So now, Chris, we're actually going to make a caramel sauce, which may seem kind of strange for a savory dish, but it's a pretty frequent technique used in Southeast Asia, especially when you have the kind of fermented, funky flavors that we have going on here with the fish sauce and the pork and all of that.

So over a medium-high heat, I'm just going to heat up these six tablespoons of brown sugar.

And I have a tablespoon of water.

With a caramel you might make with a white sugar, you can really see, obviously, when it starts to change color.

That's not so easy to do here.

So what we're looking for is... - Especially when you choose a black pot, which makes it even more difficult.

- I'm up for the challenge, Chris.

So we're going to look for the sugar to start to kind of foam and get really dry.

We certainly don't want to burn the sugar, Chris, but we want a deep caramelization here.

You're looking for really bittersweet flavors.

And once I break up these pieces, I'm just going to leave it alone for, you know, three to four minutes.

All right, so you can see this is getting pretty dry.

You can see the streaks that it's leaving behind in the pot.

And you can smell that sort of bittersweet, almost burnt-sugar smell.

So I'm going to add in the braising liquid.

And then, Chris, we add seven cups of water.

But to make sure we get out all the good stuff in here, I'm actually just going to pour some of it.

- Mmm-- I'm just going to stand here and do this.

- You just do that.

- Wow.

- I'm going to pour some of this in here and swirl it around to make sure I get all of... that flavor out of here.

Now we have a few more spices to add to the mix.

I have five pieces of star anise here and three small cinnamon sticks, they're about three inches each.

And now, traditionally, Chris, this is made with pork belly, which you know is quite fatty.

Pork shoulder is a little bit more lean.

There'll still be some fat at the end to skim, but it has great flavor, it's easier to find, and there's a little bit less fat to deal with at the end.

So this is about four-and-a-half pounds of boneless pork shoulder, and I just cut it into one-and-a-half-inch pieces.

- Looks like a matcha smoothie.

- It does.

So I'm going to bring this up to a boil and then we'll cover it, reduce it to a simmer, and let it go for about 50 minutes.

At that point, we're going to take off the lid, let it reduce down, and in about another 30 minutes, it'll be all done.

You want the pork really tender, and if you have a skewer or a fork, it should have no resistance when you try to push it through.

So in the meantime, let's deal with our eggs.

We have enough water in here just so it skims the bottom of the steamer basket, and we brought it up to a boil.

I'm just going to put in six eggs.

And we'll cover this and let it go for 12 minutes.

And then you do want to have an ice-water bath at the ready, because at the 12 minutes, we're going to add the eggs.

That'll shock them, stop the cooking, and make them easier to peel.

All right, Chris, so after it's simmered for about 50 minutes with the lid on, I took the lid off and just let it go for another half an hour.

Took out the star anise pods and the cinnamon, and now I'm just going to skim off some of the fat.

And you may need to tilt the pot towards you to make sure you get as much as you can.

So what we have here is this very savory, little bit sweet, kind of pungent stew.

So the toppings really make a difference here.

So let's move over here.

We have these eggs that we just steamed for the 12 minutes.

You can either halve them or quarter them, depending on your preference.

But you see, by steaming them for that short period of time and shocking them, they keep those really beautiful bright yellow yolks.

Traditionally, Chris, you would actually serve the rice on the side, but we're going to put rice in the bowls and I'll ladle some soup on for you.

- Mmm.

- There you are.

And then you can top with a handful of cilantro.

And the eggs, of course.

Wow, and it is a much cheerier bowl now with these toppings.

- Okay, now, I would just want to say I know that some people go, "Oh, it's got fish sauce in it, I'm not making that."

Or, "It's got eggs in it, I'm not eating that.

This is one of my favorite dishes we made the last year.

This is just really good.

- It's all about balance.

It really does kind of meld in with all the other flavors.

- This is so good.

I mean, there's nothing in the American palette, traditional American palette, that's anything like this.

It's sweet, it's got that depth of flavor.

It's a flavor you can just keep tasting it over and over again, because it's really intriguing, you know?

- And it's really warming without being too heavy, because you have that really clear kind of broth.

- So this is moo palo.

It's a Chinese dish by way of Thailand.

It's a braised pork, but it has five-spice powder, or our version of it, with cinnamon stick and star anise.

Has cilantro, of course, fish sauce, has caramelized sugar, which adds a really interesting balance to the recipe, and then you can serve it with hard-cooked eggs.

You can serve it with some cilantro, and, if you like, put some rice in the bowl, as well.

You can get this recipe, moo palo, and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Since 1899, my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

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- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

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