Thai

A 30-minute meal that just happens to be vegan and gluten-free.

An easy Thai recipe that's perfect for weeknights.

This Thai chicken curry relies on coconut cream for luxurious creaminess.

This sauce, which is directly inspired by Vietnamese Nước Màu, tastes great with vegetables, noodles, fish, and more.

If you can find holy basil, use it! But Thai basil or sweet basil will do, too.

It's sour upfront from lime juice and salty from fish sauce, with a mild sweetness from nam prik pao paste.

"There is no proper version of this dish that isn’t spicy."

Your favorite noodle dish just got a salad remix.

This Thai-style dish is loaded with flavor and texture.

They're finished with a sweet coconut sauce, corn, and scallions.

Chrissy's mom's first cookbook recipe did *not* disappoint.

Fresh and crunchy perfection.

The tender grilled planks get eaten up immediately.

Prik Khing curry paste does all the work for me.

But best of all, they're easy on the cook.

It’s true: You can enjoy a satisfying Thai-style chicken curry on a weeknight without leaving home. I’ve pared down the classic recipe to the bare essentials, which means you can get this one-pot stew from stove to craw in less than 30 minutes. You’ll love the complex spices, fresh herbs, and creamy coconut milk base. Ladle this curry over a steaming bowl of cauliflower rice, and your supper will be Thai-rific!

Shredded carrots have a firm crunch and sturdy bite that rival all other vegetables, and when they get thrown in a mix like this glorious salad, they are an essential supporting player. But it’s not just about the carrots and their sweetness here in this Thai-inspired hash — it’s also about the cabbage, the grapefruit, the zucchini, and so much more. Anna Jones is a cook and writer from London who got her start in Jamie Oliver’s restaurants and on his creative team.

You'll want to eat the curried peanut sauce on everything.

Cabbage may be a humble ingredient, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. There are so many varieties with different shapes, textures, and colors that it’s time to make cabbage the main attraction. In this vegan dish, sweet, tender Napa cabbage simmers in a coconut-peanut sauce. One bite and you’ll wonder why you don’t cook cabbage more often. This dish is essentially a quick cabbage braise.

Say goodbye to bland chicken forever.

There are times when only classic chicken noodle soup will do, and then there are other times when you crave chicken noodle soup 2.0 — this is for the latter.

Around the World in 30 Soups: This month we’re collaborating with chefs, cookbook authors, and our own Kitchn crew to share a globetrotting adventure in soups from countries and cuisines around the world. Today’s stop: Thailand. It’s tough to pick just one soup from Thailand. Leela Punyaratabandhu creates wonderful Thai food that is both accessible and delicious.

This Thai coconut soup is one of my absolute favorite soups for the winter — heck, for any season! With temperatures here in Edmonton, Canada plummeting to -40°C over the last week, this soup — with its delicately sweet, salty, and spicy flavors — has become more than just a craving: it’s a necessity. I love its versatility and how easy it is to make, particularly if you’ve made the curry paste in advance.

Thai stir-fried greens have been in my weeknight cooking repertoire since I began cooking. It’s the first Thai dish I ever prepared that tasted straight-outta-Thai-Town authentic, and it’s so simple, I make it — usually with rice and a Thai omelet — whenever I want a quick, flavorful dinner with lots of healthy leafy greens. I typically use some variety of sturdy Asian green vegetable, like Chinese broccoli or yu choy sum, pictured above.

This late-summer soup has all the components of your usual corn chowder, but adds a tantalizing twist with some of my favorite Thai flavors, like lemongrass, chili peppers, and coconut milk. While it keeps the comfort food nature of the original, the extra additions keep things interesting. This is also one of those meals I’m halfway through enjoying before I realize it happens to be gluten-free and vegan.

If you thought meatballs were reserved for spaghetti and marinara sauce, think again. This one-pot meal will change the way you see meatballs. The combination of lean and tender chicken meatballs and a spiced sauce, plus all the ingredients you love in Thai food — like warm curry, ginger, cilantro, basil, coconut milk, and more — bring big flavor to weeknight dinner.

There’s been a jar of Thai green curry paste lurking in the back of my pantry for ages. Ages. Resolved to use it, I even brought it with me when I moved from Iowa back to New York. So when I opened up Nigella Lawson’s new book, “Simply Nigella,” and discovered this cheery dish that prominently features green Thai curry paste, I knew this is what this jar was waiting for.

Whether I’m trying to put a late-night dinner on the table or cooking for onekai jeow Fish sauce! Rather than salt, fish sauce is added to the beaten eggs, along with green onions, herbs or shallots. Some recipes for kai jeow also call for soy sauce, but I prefer a simple omelet of just eggs, fish sauce and a lot of sliced scallions. I also occasionally add ground pork or chicken for a slightly more substantial main dish.

Here’s the drink I’ll be sipping on all summer long: Thai iced tea! I used to reserve this refreshing drink for combatting the heat when I ordered spicy curries at Thai restaurants, but not anymore. I recently discovered that making your own Thai iced tea is surprisingly easy. Thai iced tea is a real treat. While regular iced tea can be somewhat mild, and served with the option of sweetened or unsweetened, Thai iced tea is more concentrated and flavorful.

Thai massaman curry — also known as matsaman or mussaman curry — is a creamy, mildly spicy, nutty, slow-cooked curry heavily influenced by Indian, Malaysian, and Persian cuisines. It is not originally a native Thai curry, but it’s been wonderfully assimilated into classic Thai cuisine. Massaman curry can be made with chicken, beef, or lamb, and it’s an elegant dish to serve for weeknight meals or dinner parties alike.

As a Chinese-American girl growing up on everything from pot roast and pasta to tofu and stir-fries, I’ve always had a rather eclectic appreciation for food. But for those really busy workweeks, I always find myself — in an unironically stereotypical sort of way — coming back to one basic strategy from my Chinese roots. I call it the “serve with rice” strategy.

This five-ingredient noodle salad strikes the perfect balance of sweet and savory, crunchy and tender.

It's tossed in an irresistible peanut butter dressing.

It has all the hallmarks of your favorite takeout pad Thai — except those spaghetti squash noodles are the star of the show.

I’ll be completely honest: Being a food writer and photographer means my family is used to eating odd food at even odder times of the day. During the summer holidays, this is not much of an issue – my daughter will happily eat breakfast for dinner if I’ve been shooting pancakes in the bright afternoon light, or sit down for supper at 8 p.m. after I’ve taken advantage of the soft evening light to get a nicely shadowed shot.

Last week’s NY Times Dining section was heavy on the Easter goods, which might be why Melissa Clark’s Thai soup stuck in our mind as something different. We couldn’t wait to try it, and even though we couldn’t get a stalk of lemon grass at our nearest market, the soup was exactly what we wanted — spicy, sweet, and full of fragrant green herbs. Clark’s inspiration was some leftover, takeout tom yum soup that she brought to life with coconut milk.

This fish salad takes its cues from laab – the sour lime, the spicy chilies – but it’s lighter and sweeter than traditional pork laab, with plain white fish as the base, and strips of julienned cucumber tossed in for a sweet, cool crunch. If you like your food spicy, throw in a few more chilies. There’s just an edge of heat in this – just enough to make it great with a icy cold, pale beer.

One of the pleasures of home cooking is discovering that favorite, longed-for foods are not so out of reach, after all. Mango and sticky rice is one of these favorite foods — a dessert treat I would order whenever I could in Thai restaurants. But more often than not, it was unavailable. It wasn’t the mango season, they would explain, or they didn’t care to make such a common, homestyle dish. I craved it, but rarely ate it. Then I realized that I was being very, very silly.

Not only is this one of the easiest Thai-inspired curries you’ll ever make, but it also delivers that deep, spiced flavor you expect with this kind of meal. The slow cooker works its magic, infusing a hearty pork shoulder with the pungent aromas of green curry paste and rich, warm coconut milk. It does all the heavy lifting, leaving you with a fragrant sauce and meat so tender it falls apart with the touch of your fork. The secret ingredient to this pork curry is Thai green curry paste.

I love to set a big bowl of freshly-steamed mussels down in the middle of a dinner party and watch what happens. Some guests dive in with gleeful abandon while the shellfish newbies hang back to see how it’s done. Either way, soon everyone is grabbing mussels from the bowl, slurping from the shells, and fighting over the last chunks of bread to sop up the sauce. It’s a happy, playful, messy scene that never fails to get the party going.

Among the other flamboyantly garnished and highly aromatic plates being handed around the table at a Thai dinner a few weeks ago, this one seemed rather Plain Jane. An unassuming bowl of slippery noodles sprinkled with what looked like crispy pork and crushed peanuts? But one bite was all it took — it was love at first spicy-tangy-sweet forkful. Since that fateful dinner, I’ve become rather obsessed with this Thai noodle dish.

All week we’re sharing Asian food recipes and inspiration here at The Kitchn. Here are some refreshing drinks to sip alongside your East, South, and Southeast Asian meals – or just to cool down on a hot summer day.

Egg noodles and curry might seem like an unlikely combination, but if you’ve ever tried the Burmese-influenced Thai dish khao soi, you know the two were meant to be. A popular street dish in Northern Thailand, khao soi isn’t often found in restaurants abroad, but not to worry.

I recently had the best Pad Thai of my life. It was one of those restaurant meals where the person cooking takes us under her wing and simply says, “How about I just cook for you?” Chef Ngamprom “Hong” Thaimee of Ngam in NYC’s East Village then brought out plate after plate of regional Thai cuisine from her native Chiang Mai, Thailand, and I was floored.

One of life’s greatest dilemmas is deciding whether to make pad Thai or spring rolls for dinner. Pad Thai is warm and comforting, while spring rolls are crisp and light — but what if you’re in the mood for both? Now, thanks to these pad Thai spring rolls, you don’t have to choose. You start by tossing rice noodles in the signature sweet-tangy pad Thai sauce, made with tamarind, soy sauce, sugar, and lime.