Sticky rice — ข้าวเหนียว (khao niao) — is the foundation of northern and northeastern Thai cooking, eaten at every meal by hand, pinched into small balls and used to scoop up whatever is on the table alongside it. It is a completely different grain from jasmine rice and requires a completely different cooking method. It is never boiled. It is soaked overnight and steamed — always. Once you have learned how to cook it properly, it is one of the simplest and most satisfying things you can make. And once you have eaten a meal with properly cooked sticky rice, you will understand immediately why the people of Isan and the north consider it not a side dish but the centre of the meal.
Ingredients
400gramsglutinous sticky rice
Water for soaking
¼ teaspoonsalt
Directions
Place the sticky rice in a large bowl and cover generously with cold water. Leave to soak overnight, or for a minimum of 4 hours. The rice will absorb water and swell noticeably — this is correct. The soaking step cannot be skipped or significantly shortened, as it is what allows the rice to cook evenly throughout during steaming.
When ready to cook, drain the soaked rice thoroughly through a fine sieve and rinse briefly under cold running water.
Fill a steamer pot or large saucepan with water to a depth of about 5cm and bring to a vigorous boil. The water level should sit well below the base of the steamer basket — the rice must steam, not touch the water below.
Line a bamboo steamer basket or metal steamer with a piece of muslin cloth or a clean, thin cotton cloth. Add the drained rice and spread it out into an even layer. Fold the edges of the cloth loosely over the rice.
Place the steamer over the boiling water, cover with a lid, and steam for 20–25 minutes until the rice is tender, translucent, and slightly glossy. After 15 minutes, lift the lid and use a spoon or spatula to turn the rice over — this ensures even cooking throughout.
To check if it is done, take a few grains and press them between your fingers — they should be fully tender with no chalky centre remaining.
Transfer the cooked sticky rice to a bowl, season with salt, and toss gently. Cover with a clean cloth or lid to keep warm until serving.
Serve directly from a small bowl or traditional woven kratip basket, allowing each person to take portions by hand throughout the meal.
Notes
If you do not have a traditional bamboo steamer, a metal colander set over a pot of boiling water and covered tightly with a lid or foil works very well. A Dutch poffertjes pan or any steamer insert with small holes also works — the key is that the steam circulates freely around the rice.
Avoid using a rice cooker for glutinous sticky rice unless it has a specific sticky rice setting, as standard rice cooker programmes are calibrated for jasmine rice and will produce an uneven, partially undercooked result. Leftover sticky rice can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two days.
To reheat, wrap in a damp cloth and steam for 5 minutes, or microwave briefly with a splash of water to restore its soft, chewy texture.
Gai yang is the dish that defines Isan street food. Whole chicken pieces marinated in lemongrass, garlic, coriander root, and fish sauce, then grilled until the skin is golden, slightly charred, and impossibly fragrant. It is the kind of food that stops you in your tracks — the smell alone is enough. Traditionally served with sticky rice and som tum green papaya salad, this is the complete Isan meal that millions of Thais eat every week. Simple ingredients, patient cooking, and a result that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Som tum is one of Thailand's most iconic dishes — born in the northeast and now loved across the entire country and far beyond. Shredded green papaya is pounded in a mortar and pestle with chilli, garlic, cherry tomatoes, green beans, fish sauce, lime juice, and palm sugar, each ingredient bruised just enough to release its flavour without losing all of its texture. The result is simultaneously crunchy, juicy, sour, spicy, and sweet — a dish that encapsulates everything Thai cuisine does best in a single bowl. Simple to make, impossible to forget, and endlessly adaptable to whatever is fresh and available.
Som tum taeng is the cucumber cousin of Thailand's most iconic salad — lighter and more delicate than the classic green papaya version, but built on exactly the same principles and just as addictive. Cool, crisp cucumber takes the place of shredded papaya, absorbing the sharp, spicy dressing in a way that feels particularly welcome in warm weather. All the hallmarks are here — the pound of chilli and garlic, the cherry tomatoes bruised into the dressing, the roasted peanuts, the balance of sour, salty, sweet, and spicy that makes som tum one of the most satisfying salads in the world. Ready in ten minutes and impossible to stop eating.
Fresh, cool, and zingy — this simple Thai cucumber salad is the perfect companion to any curry. Crisp cucumber is dressed in a light, tangy sauce with just the right amount of heat, balanced by a touch of sweetness. It takes minutes to prepare and brings a refreshing contrast to rich, coconut-based dishes. A staple of Thai home cooking, and once you've tried it alongside a bowl of red curry, you'll never want to eat one without the other.
Thai food has a reputation for being complex — and in some ways, it is. The flavours are layered, the ingredients specific, and the balance between sweet, sour, salty, and spicy demands a certain attention that not every cuisine asks of its cook. But the techniques themselves? They are largely accessible, logical, and once understood, transformative. You do not need a professional kitchen, a lifetime of experience, or even particularly specialist equipment. You need to understand how a handful of core methods work — and why they produce the results they do.
Master these, and Thai cooking opens up entirely.
Pounding the Paste: Why the Mortar Matters
Before there is a curry, there is a paste. And before there is a paste, there is a mortar and pestle — the most important piece of equipment in a traditional Thai kitchen, and the technique that underpins everything built around it.
Pounding is not the same as blending. A blender cuts ingredients into uniform pieces; a mortar and pestle crushes and bruises them, rupturing the cell walls and releasing oils, juices, and aromatic compounds in a way that no blade can replicate. The result is a paste with a depth and complexity — a slightly coarse, fibrous texture and an intensity of fragrance — that blended pastes simply cannot match. Thai cooks will tell you they can taste the difference immediately, and they are right.
The technique requires patience. You work from the hardest ingredients to the softest, pounding each one until it is fully broken down before adding the next. Lemongrass first, then galangal, then garlic and shallots, then the chillies, then the softer aromatics. Each ingredient is incorporated before the next is added. The process takes ten to fifteen minutes of sustained effort, but the paste it produces is the foundation of the entire dish.
For everyday cooking, a good quality ready-made paste — like ONOFF's organic curry pastes — is the practical solution that sacrifices nothing in authenticity. But understanding why the mortar matters changes how you use even a premade paste: you treat it with more care, bloom it properly in hot oil, and recognise the craft behind it.
Cracking the Coconut Cream: The First Step of Every Curry
One of the most important techniques in Thai curry cooking is almost invisible — and it is the step that separates a flat, one-dimensional curry from one with genuine depth and complexity. It is called cracking the coconut cream, and it is where every well-made Thai curry begins.
Coconut cream, when heated slowly in a dry pan or wok, begins to separate. The fat splits from the solids, leaving a pool of clear coconut oil in which the curry paste can then be fried. This process — known in Thai as แตกมัน (taek man), literally "breaking the fat" — blooms the aromatics in the paste in a way that adding them to water or thin liquid never could. The heat of the fat carries the flavour of the paste deep into the dish before the liquid is ever added.
The visual cue is clear: when the coconut cream has cracked properly, you will see the oil pooling around the edges of the paste and a slightly glossy sheen across the surface of the pan. This is the moment to add your protein or vegetables. Do not rush it. The five minutes this step takes repays itself many times over in the finished dish.
ONOFF's Coconut Cream is rich enough in fat content to crack properly — a detail that matters more than most people realise when they reach for a can.
Stir Frying at High Heat: Speed, Smoke and the Wok
Thai stir frying — pad — is one of the most recognisable cooking techniques in Southeast Asian cooking, and one of the most commonly misunderstood by home cooks outside the region. The misunderstanding is usually the same: not enough heat.
Authentic Thai stir frying happens at temperatures that most domestic hobs struggle to reach. Street food vendors and restaurant kitchens use powerful gas burners that produce an intense, concentrated flame capable of heating a wok to temperatures that create what Chinese and Thai cooks call wok hei — the slightly smoky, caramelised quality that gives great stir fried dishes their characteristic flavour. It is produced by the rapid vaporisation of moisture and the Maillard reaction happening simultaneously at very high heat.
At home, the way to get closest to this is to use your hob's largest, most powerful burner, preheat your wok until it is visibly smoking before adding any oil, and — crucially — cook in small batches. Overcrowding the pan drops the temperature immediately, turning a stir fry into a steam, killing the caramelisation and producing a watery, flat result. Cook less at a time, move quickly, and keep the heat as high as your equipment allows.
The other non-negotiable is mise en place — everything cut, measured, and ready before the wok goes on the heat. Stir frying happens in two to three minutes. There is no time to chop a garlic clove once you have started.
Balancing the Dressing: The Heart of Thai Salads
Thai salads — yum — are not dressed in the Western sense. There is no vinaigrette whisked separately and poured over at the end. The dressing is built directly in the bowl, tasted, and adjusted until the balance is right, and then the ingredients are added and tossed through it. The sequence matters, and the tasting is everything.
The base of almost every Thai salad dressing is the same: fish sauce for salt and depth, lime juice for sourness, palm sugar for sweetness, and fresh chilli for heat. The ratios vary by dish and by personal preference, but the principle is constant — each element should be present, none should dominate, and the whole should taste complete.
The technique is in the adjusting. Add the fish sauce first, then the lime, then the sugar. Taste after each addition. If it is too sharp, add a little more sugar. If it is flat, add more lime. If it lacks depth, a touch more fish sauce. The dressing is finished when it tastes balanced — when no single flavour is jumping out above the others. That balance is the dish. ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce and Thai Rice Vinegar are reliable, consistent building blocks for this process — clean enough in flavour to make the adjusting straightforward.
Steaming: Gentle Heat, Preserved Nutrition
Steaming is one of the oldest and most widely used techniques in Thai cooking — and one of the most underappreciated by cooks who associate it only with health food or bland results. In Thailand, steaming is used for everything from sticky rice and fish to custards, dumplings, and whole cakes.
The technique is simple but the results depend on getting a few things right. The steam should be vigorous before the food goes in — a gentle trickle produces uneven cooking. The food should never touch the water below. And the lid should seal well enough to keep the steam concentrated around the food rather than escaping constantly.
For sticky rice — one of the most important applications of steaming in Thai cooking — the grain must be soaked overnight before steaming, a step that cannot be skipped. The soaking softens the grain and ensures it cooks evenly throughout its twenty-five minute time in the basket. The result is chewy, fragrant, and nothing like the overcooked, gummy result that comes from boiling glutinous rice in water.
Grilling: Patience Over the Flame
Thai grilling — yang — is not about speed or high heat. It is about patience. The great grilled dishes of Thai cooking — gai yang, moo ping, satay — are all cooked slowly over medium heat, turned regularly, and allowed to caramelise gradually rather than char quickly. The goal is meat that is cooked through with a lacquered, slightly sticky exterior where the sugars in the marinade have caught the heat and turned golden.
The marinade is essential and always applied well ahead of cooking — overnight whenever possible, so the aromatics have time to penetrate the meat. Lemongrass, coriander root, garlic, white pepper, fish sauce, and a touch of palm sugar are the classic building blocks. The sugar in the marinade is what creates the caramelisation; the aromatics are what give it its Thai character.
At home, a hot griddle pan with a little patience produces excellent results. Resist the urge to turn the meat constantly — let it sit, develop colour, and release naturally from the surface before turning. The oven finish method — searing on the griddle and completing in a 180°C oven — gives reliable, evenly cooked results for larger pieces like chicken thighs or drumsticks.
The Finishing Touch: Fresh Herbs Added at the End
One detail that distinguishes Thai cooking from many other cuisines is when the fresh herbs go in. In Thai cooking, fresh herbs — holy basil, coriander, mint, spring onion — are almost always added at the very end of cooking, off the heat or in the final thirty seconds, so their fragrance and colour are preserved rather than cooked away.
This is especially important in pad krapow, where the holy basil goes in only after the heat has been turned off, wilting in the residual warmth of the pan rather than frying. The difference between basil added at the beginning and basil added at the end is not subtle — it is the difference between a green, fragrant, alive dish and one that smells faintly of cooked vegetables.
The same principle applies to coriander on a finished curry, mint on a laab, and lime leaves sliced paper-thin over a bowl of soup. These are not garnishes in the decorative sense. They are the final layer of flavour — and in Thai cooking, that last layer matters as much as the first.
Putting It Together
None of these techniques exists in isolation. They are part of the same philosophy — the same commitment to freshness, balance, and the careful treatment of good ingredients that defines Thai cooking at every level. Understanding them does not just make you a better Thai cook. It makes you a more attentive cook in general, more aware of heat and timing and the difference between rushing a dish and letting it develop.
Thai cooking rewards patience and punishes shortcuts. But it rewards generously — with food that is vivid, fragrant, and deeply satisfying in a way that is very hard to achieve by any other means.
Pad pak boong is one of the great Thai street food dishes — and one of the most underrated. Morning glory, known in Thai as ผักบุ้ง (pak boong), is a semi-aquatic leafy vegetable with hollow stems and tender leaves that wilts beautifully in a screaming hot wok, absorbing the salty, garlicky sauce in seconds. At street food stalls across Thailand, it is tossed in the wok at extraordinary heat — sometimes theatrically flipped high into the air, earning the dish its nickname "flying vegetables" — and arrives at the table blistered, fragrant, and deeply satisfying. It is the kind of dish that reminds you how much a handful of simple ingredients can achieve when the heat is right and the timing is perfect.
There are ingredients that flavour a dish, and there are ingredients that define a cuisine. Lemongrass is the latter. Its clean, citrusy fragrance is so immediately and unmistakably Thai that a single stalk, bruised and dropped into a hot pan, is enough to transport you — to a street food stall in Chiang Mai, a family kitchen in Isan, a floating market on the canals outside Bangkok. No other ingredient captures the essence of Thai cooking quite so completely, or quite so instantly.
A Plant With Deep Roots
Lemongrass — known in Thai as ตะไคร้ (takrai) — is a tall, fibrous grass that grows abundantly across Southeast Asia, thriving in the tropical heat and rainfall of Thailand's plains and hillsides. It has been cultivated and used in Thai cooking, traditional medicine, and Buddhist ritual for centuries, long before it became a fashionable ingredient in restaurant kitchens around the world.
The plant itself is unassuming to look at — a dense clump of long, pale green stalks with a bulbous white base and rough, papery outer leaves. It is the inner core of those stalks, pale and tightly layered, that holds the essential oils responsible for its extraordinary fragrance. Those oils — primarily citral, the same compound that gives lemon its characteristic scent — are released when the stalk is bruised, sliced, or pounded, flooding the air around it with a fragrance that is simultaneously citrusy, floral, and faintly herbal, with none of the sharpness of actual lemon.
How Lemongrass Works in Thai Cooking
Lemongrass appears in Thai cooking in several distinct forms, each suited to a different purpose. Understanding those forms is key to using it well.
In curry pastes — including ONOFF's red, green, Panang, and massaman pastes — lemongrass is pounded into the paste along with the other aromatics, its fibres broken down completely so that its flavour infuses the entire dish without any texture remaining. This is where lemongrass does its deepest work, contributing a fragrant citrus backbone that underpins everything else in the paste.
In soups and broths — like the famous tom yum and tom kha — lemongrass stalks are bruised with the back of a knife and added whole or in large pieces to the simmering liquid, infusing the broth with flavour before being removed before serving. The bruising is essential: an unbruised stalk releases very little of its fragrance. A well-bruised one perfumes the entire pot.
In salads and stir fries, lemongrass is sliced as finely as possible — the inner white core only, the outer leaves discarded — and used raw or briefly cooked. At this fineness it becomes almost translucent, contributing both flavour and a very subtle texture to the finished dish.
Lemongrass Beyond the Kitchen
In Thailand, lemongrass has never been confined to cooking alone. It has been used for centuries in traditional medicine as a digestive aid, an antimicrobial, and a treatment for fever and inflammation — properties that modern research has increasingly supported. Lemongrass tea, made from the fresh or dried leaves steeped in hot water, is a common household remedy across Thailand and much of Southeast Asia, valued for its calming, digestive, and antioxidant qualities.
The essential oil extracted from lemongrass is widely used in aromatherapy and natural skincare, and the plant's natural insect-repelling properties have made it a fixture in Thai gardens and outdoor spaces for generations. In a country where the boundary between food, medicine, and ritual has always been porous, lemongrass moves comfortably between all three.
Lemongrass and the Thai Flavour Balance
Within Thai cuisine's celebrated five-flavour framework — sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and bitter — lemongrass does not fit neatly into a single category. It is primarily aromatic, contributing fragrance and brightness rather than a dominant flavour note. But that aromatic quality performs a structural function: it lifts the other flavours around it, creating the sense of freshness and aliveness that distinguishes Thai cooking from cuisines built on earthier, slower spice profiles.
This is why lemongrass appears in almost every category of Thai dish — in soups, in curries, in salads, in marinades, in dipping sauces, and in desserts. It is not a specialist ingredient with a narrow application. It is a constant presence, threading through the entire cuisine like a single fragrant note that ties everything together.
Choosing and Storing Lemongrass
Fresh lemongrass is increasingly available in supermarkets across Europe, and its quality matters. Look for stalks that feel firm and heavy, with a pale, tightly packed inner core and no signs of drying or browning at the cut end. The outer leaves should be intact — they protect the inner stalk and keep it fresh longer.
At home, lemongrass keeps well in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, wrapped loosely in a damp cloth or paper towel. It also freezes beautifully — whole stalks can be frozen and used directly from frozen in soups and curries, losing very little of their fragrance in the process.
When preparing lemongrass, remove the tough outer layers until you reach the pale, smooth inner stalk. For pastes and fine slicing, use only the bottom third of the stalk where the essential oils are most concentrated. The upper, greener portion is too fibrous to eat but makes an excellent addition to stocks and broths.
An Ingredient That Earns Its Place
Some ingredients are interchangeable. Lemongrass is not. There is no substitute that replicates its particular combination of citrus fragrance, herbal freshness, and aromatic depth — and no Thai kitchen, whether in Bangkok or Brussels, should be without it.
It is the ingredient that, more than any other, makes Thai food smell like Thai food. And in a cuisine where fragrance is as important as flavour, that is everything.
This is Thai comfort food at its most aromatic and most elegant — a clear, fragrant broth built on fresh lemongrass, ginger, and kaffir lime leaves, with tender pieces of chicken and a seasoning of ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce that gives the soup its gentle, rounded depth. Lighter than tom kha and simpler than tom yum, this soup lets lemongrass speak clearly and without competition. It is the kind of dish that feels restorative the moment the fragrance reaches you — warming, clean, and deeply satisfying.
Plant-based eating has never been more popular. But for many people who don't eat meat or animal products, eating out or cooking from a new cuisine can feel like an exercise in substitution and compromise — scanning menus for the one or two options that have been grudgingly adapted, or cooking recipes that feel like pale imitations of the original.
Thai cuisine is different. Not because it has been adapted for plant-based eating — but because it was never really built around meat in the first place.
A Cuisine Built on Plants
At its structural core, Thai food is a plant-based cuisine. Rice — steamed jasmine in the centre and south, glutinous sticky rice in the north and northeast — is the foundation of every meal. Around it sits a collection of dishes built primarily from vegetables, fresh herbs, aromatic pastes, and fermented sauces, with protein added as one element among many rather than as the centrepiece that everything else serves.
Walk through any Thai market and the evidence is immediate. The stalls are piled high with fresh produce — lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, holy basil, long beans, aubergine, banana blossom, morning glory, baby corn, and dozens of varieties of chilli. Meat and fish are present, but they occupy a smaller proportion of the overall landscape than in many other food cultures. Thai cooking has always known how to make vegetables the main event.
This is partly practical — in a tropical climate with year-round growing seasons, fresh produce has always been abundant and affordable. But it is also philosophical. Thai Buddhist tradition, which runs deeply through the culture, has long encouraged mindfulness about what we eat and where it comes from, creating a natural openness to plant-based cooking that many other cuisines lack.
The Flavour Problem — Already Solved
The biggest challenge in plant-based cooking is flavour. Specifically, the deep, savoury, umami-rich quality that meat and fish naturally provide — and that can be so difficult to replicate without them.
Thai cuisine has been solving this problem for centuries, long before plant-based eating became a global conversation. The solution is fermentation. Fish sauce — the backbone of Thai seasoning — is a fermented product, and it is the fermentation process that creates its extraordinary depth. When you replace fish sauce with a well-made plant-based alternative like ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, you are not simply removing an ingredient and hoping for the best. You are replacing one fermented, deeply flavourful liquid with another — and the depth that results is genuine, not approximate.
The same logic applies to oyster sauce, another common Thai seasoning. ONOFF's No Oyster Vegan Seasoning Sauce provides the same dark, glossy richness in stir fries and marinades without any animal ingredients. These are not compromises — they are direct replacements that honour the flavour principles of the original.
The Curry Question
For many people, the first concern when approaching Thai food as a vegetarian or vegan is the curry. Thai curries are built on coconut cream and aromatic paste — both entirely plant-based — with protein and vegetables added to the sauce. Replacing chicken with tofu, aubergine, sweet potato, or chickpeas requires no adjustment to the sauce whatsoever. The paste remains the same. The coconut cream remains the same. The balance of flavours remains the same.
ONOFF's curry pastes — red, green, yellow, Panang, and massaman — are all built from certified organic herbs and spices with no animal ingredients in the paste itself. This means that every curry in the ONOFF range is, at its foundation, already vegan. The choice of protein is simply that — a choice, not a constraint.
A green curry with tofu and courgette made with ONOFF's Green Curry Paste and Coconut Cream is not a lesser version of the dish. It is the dish, made differently — and made in a way that is entirely consistent with how Thai cooking has always approached flexibility and adaptation.
The Salad Tradition
Thai salads — the yum family, as well as Isan classics like larb and som tum — are among the most naturally plant-friendly dishes in any cuisine. Their dressings are built on lime juice, palm sugar, and fish sauce or its vegan equivalent, with fresh herbs, shallots, and chilli doing most of the flavour work. The protein in these salads — minced meat, prawns, or seafood in traditional versions — can be replaced with crumbled tofu, mushrooms, or simply omitted in favour of more vegetables and herbs, without the essential character of the dish changing.
The vegan larb with tofu and mushrooms is a perfect example of this. Crumbled tofu and finely chopped oyster or shiitake mushrooms absorb the sharp, fragrant dressing in exactly the same way that minced pork does in the traditional version. The toasted rice powder, the fresh mint, the lime — these are the elements that make larb what it is, and none of them have anything to do with meat.
Street Food and the Plant-Based Tradition
Thailand has a long and genuine tradition of vegetarian street food that predates the current global interest in plant-based eating by centuries. Thai Buddhist vegetarianism — known as jay — is observed by a significant portion of the population, particularly during the Vegetarian Festival celebrated each October in communities with Chinese-Thai heritage across the country. During this period, an extraordinary range of entirely plant-based Thai dishes appear on street food stalls and in restaurants — dishes that are complex, deeply flavoured, and completely satisfying, demonstrating that Thai cuisine loses nothing essential when meat is removed.
The jay tradition also shows that Thai plant-based cooking is not a recent adaptation or a Western import. It is a living, rooted part of the cuisine itself — one that has developed its own techniques, its own dishes, and its own flavour philosophy over generations.
Cooking Thai Food as a Vegetarian or Vegan
In practical terms, cooking Thai food plant-based at home is simpler than it might appear. The substitutions are few and the logic is consistent: replace fish sauce with ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, replace oyster sauce with ONOFF's No Oyster Vegan Seasoning Sauce, choose a protein that suits the dish — tofu, tempeh, mushrooms, chickpeas, or simply more vegetables — and cook everything else exactly as the recipe instructs.
The aromatics, the pastes, the coconut cream, the fresh herbs, the dressings — all of it remains unchanged. Because all of it was already plant-based to begin with.
That is the quiet truth about Thai cuisine and plant-based eating: the adaptation required is minimal, because the foundation was always there. Thai food does not need to be reinvented for vegetarians and vegans. It simply needs to be cooked — and the results speak for themselves.
Larb is one of the great dishes of Isan cuisine — bold, punchy, and built around a dressing that is sharp, salty, and deeply fragrant. This vegan version replaces the traditional minced meat with crumbled firm tofu and finely chopped mushrooms, which together absorb the dressing beautifully and provide the texture and substance the dish needs. The ingredient that makes it sing is the same one that makes every larb sing: the dressing — and at the heart of that dressing is ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, delivering all the depth and layered saltiness of fish sauce without any animal ingredients. Served with sticky rice and raw vegetables on the side, this is Isan cooking at its most honest and most satisfying.
This yellow curry soup combines the warmth of turmeric and fragrant Thai spices with the creaminess of coconut milk. Tender noodles soak up the rich broth, while fresh vegetables add texture and balance. It’s a wholesome, plant-based dish that delivers both comfort and flavor, perfect for anyone craving a hearty yet nourishing Thai-inspired meal.
Satay is the street food that stops everyone in their tracks — skewers of marinated chicken grilled over charcoal until golden and slightly caramelised at the edges, served with a rich, nutty peanut sauce and a cool, tangy cucumber relish alongside. It is one of the most universally beloved dishes in Thai cuisine, and with good reason. The marinade is fragrant with turmeric, lemongrass, and coconut cream. The peanut sauce is deep, slightly sweet, and faintly spiced. Together they create a combination that is impossible to eat just one of. A staple of Thai street food stalls and temple fairs, and every bit as good made at home.
Ingredients
For the chicken:
600gramschicken breast or thigh fillets, cut into long thin strips
2stalks lemongrass, white part only, finely sliced
3clovesgarlic, roughly chopped
1teaspoonfresh turmeric, grated (or ½ teaspoon ground turmeric)
1teaspoonground coriander
1teaspoonground cumin
1tablespoonpalm sugar (or coconut sugar as a substitute)
1tablespoonpalm sugar (or coconut sugar as a substitute)
½ teaspoon salt
smallhandful of fresh coriander leaves
Directions
The chicken:
Using a mortar and pestle, pound the lemongrass and garlic into a rough paste.
Combine the paste with turmeric, coriander, cumin, palm sugar, No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, Coconut Cream, and vegetable oil in a bowl and mix well.
Add the chicken strips and toss thoroughly to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours — overnight gives the best result.
Soak the bamboo skewers in cold water for 30 minutes to prevent them burning during cooking.
Thread the marinated chicken onto the soaked skewers, weaving each strip back and forth along the length of the skewer.
The peanut sauce:
Heat a small saucepan over medium heat and add the Red Curry Paste. Stir fry for 1 minute until fragrant.
Add the Coconut Cream and stir to combine. Bring to a gentle simmer.
Add the ground peanuts or peanut butter, palm sugar, No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, and lime juice. Stir well and simmer for 3–4 minutes until the sauce thickens to a consistency that coats the back of a spoon. Season with a pinch of salt and set aside. The sauce will thicken further as it cools — add a splash of water to loosen if needed.
The cucumber relish:
Combine the Thai Rice Vinegar, palm sugar, and salt in a small bowl and stir until dissolved.
Add the diced cucumber, shallots, and chilli and toss to coat.
Leave to sit for 5 minutes, then scatter over fresh coriander leaves just before serving.
To cook and serve:
Grill the skewers over a hot charcoal grill or on a preheated griddle pan over high heat, turning regularly, for 8–10 minutes until golden, slightly caramelised at the edges, and cooked through.
Serve immediately alongside the peanut sauce for dipping and the cucumber relish on the side.
Notes
Chicken thigh gives a juicier, more flavourful result than breast and is more forgiving on the grill — it is worth using if you can. For an oven method, roast the skewers on a rack at 220°C for 12–15 minutes, turning once halfway through, then finish under the grill for 2 minutes each side for colour.
Tod mun pla are one of Thailand's great street food classics — golden, slightly springy fish cakes fragrant with red curry paste and finely shredded kaffir lime leaves, served with a sweet and tangy dipping sauce. They are the kind of snack that disappears from the plate before you have finished cooking the last batch. The kaffir lime leaf is not a garnish here — it is woven into every cake, releasing its citrusy, floral oil with every bite and giving tod mun pla a character that no other fish cake in the world quite matches. Simple to make, deeply satisfying, and unmistakably Thai.
Ingredients
For the fish cakes:
400gramswhite fish fillets, roughly chopped (cod, haddock, or any firm white fish)
1tablespoonpalm sugar (or coconut sugar as a substitute)
½ teaspoon salt
1fresh red chilli, finely sliced
1tablespooncucumber, finely diced
1shallot, finely sliced
Directions
The dipping sauce:
Combine the Thai rice vinegar, palm sugar, and salt in a small bowl and stir until the sugar and salt have fully dissolved.
Add the chilli, cucumber, and shallot and set aside to allow the flavours to meld while you prepare the fish cakes.
The fish cakes:
Place the fish, red curry paste, No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce, palm sugar, and egg in a food processor and blend until a smooth, slightly sticky paste forms.
Transfer to a bowl and fold in the shredded kaffir lime leaves and sliced green beans by hand — these should remain visible in the mixture rather than being blended in.
With lightly oiled hands, shape the mixture into small, flat round patties approximately 1cm thick and 6cm in diameter.
Heat a generous layer of vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Fry the fish cakes in batches for 2–3 minutes per side until deep golden and cooked through. Do not crowd the pan.
Drain briefly on kitchen paper and serve immediately with the dipping sauce alongside.
Notes
The texture of tod mun pla should be slightly springy and bouncy — this comes from working the fish paste well before shaping. If the mixture feels too wet to shape, refrigerate it for 15 minutes before forming the patties. For a fully vegan version, substitute the fish with firm tofu blended smooth and use ONOFF's No Fish Vegan Seasoning Sauce throughout.
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The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
