Pad krapow

Ingredients

• Minced pork — coarsely minced300 g
• Holy basil40 g
• Thai chillies5
• Garlic5 clove
• Oyster sauce2 tbsp
• Fish sauce1 tbsp
• Dark soy sauce1 tsp
• Sugar1 tsp
• Eggs2
• Cooked rice300 g
• Neutral oil4 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Pound the garlic and chillies to a rough paste in a mortar. A mortar gives a different result from a knife: the juices come out and reach the oil.

   3 min

2. 2

   Mix the oyster, fish and soy sauces with the sugar in a cup — there will be no time once the pan is hot.

   2 min

3. 3

   Heat the wok with two spoons of oil, throw in the paste and fry for twenty seconds, to the smell.

   1 min

4. 4

   Add the pork and leave it alone for a minute, then break it up and fry two minutes more. Pour in the sauce and let it coat the meat.

   4 min

5. 5

   Off the heat, stir in the basil — the residual heat wilts it in seconds. In the same pan fry the eggs in the rest of the oil until the edges go lacy.

   3 min

About the dish

This is the most common dish in Thai street kitchens and the fastest. The whole difficulty sits in one ingredient: holy basil, krapow, tastes of pepper and clove in a way neither sweet nor Thai basil does.

The meat must not turn into a uniform paste. It goes into a screaming wok and is left alone for the first minute, so part of it browns in clumps.

It is served with rice and an egg deep-fried until the edges go lacy. The yolk runs into the rice and works as the sauce.

Worth knowing

• — The basil goes in only at the end. Cooked, it loses everything and becomes ordinary greenery.
• — Without holy basil, Thai sweet basil gives a different dish — a good one, but not pad krapow. Calling it something else is the honest move.
• — Coarse mince beats fine: fine mince welds into a single mass and loses its texture.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

36 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

56 g

More from Thailand

• Tom yum goong — A hot and sour prawn soup where the balance is set at the end: fish sauce, lime and sugar go in to taste rather than by the recipe.
• Pad thai — Rice noodles fried with tamarind, fish sauce and palm sugar. The whole thing takes four minutes.