Gai Pad King! (Chicken and Ginger Stir Fry)
Gai Pad King is a meal that you can eat for lunch or dinner in Thailand and at many restaurants across the world. This is a common spicy chicken dish that is sweet (oyster sauce), salty, and a bit spicy depending on how many chilis are used in preparation.
Prepare Ginger Chicken Stir Fry
- Chicken Breast – 1/2 lb. chopped.
- Ginger – 2/3 cup, finely shredded.
- Onion – 1 medium sized, cut into small 1/2 to 1″ pieces.
- Fungus Mushroom – 2 cups.
- Chinese Celery – 1 group.
- Baby Corn – 1/2 cup. Hubby hates the idea of these, but I use them anyway because I love them! He said they must be genetically modified because they are all the same size, color, have no blemish, etc.
- Chili Peppers – 2-8 small. Start with only a couple until you know how spicy your style of pepper is!
- Fish Sauce – 1 tablespoon.
- Oyster Sauce – 5 tablespoons.
- Soy Sauce – 2 tablespoons.
- Olive Oil – 2 tablespoons.
Cooking Instructions
1. Pour olive oil into a hot pan. Then fry the garlic and chilis over medium heat. Cook until it really smells and chokes you! You can tell when someone is cooking this one and a couple of other Thai foods when the cook starts coughing, then anyone close by, even passing by on the sidewalk, starts coughing and even sneezing too!
It’s like a chemical weapon! Relax, you won’t get hurt from it, but it does compel you to cough and most people cannot hold back.
A tip for you is that chilis vary widely in their strength. If you find some chilis you like and that you know are just the right amount of spice, try to buy those same chilis over and over. Don’t change your chilis because you won’t know their quality, their spice level.
2. Add chicken breast, fish sauce, and soy sauce. Let it cook for 10 minutes- stirring it around often over medium heat.
3. Add onion, mushroom or fungus, and baby corn. Cook for 2 minutes on medium heat. Then mix in the oyster sauce, then add Chinese celery, ginger, and scallions. Turn off the fire after about 1 minute.
4. Serve over fragrant white Jasmine rice (from Thailand!). Remember, don’t cook your rice too much. Overdone rice is yuk!
This has become my most popular dish to make for my family. When my parents come home I make this, it’s one of those few dishes that the whole family enjoys, (By family I mean my parents and my brother (when he lives at home in sweden)
In Sweden the new fashion is to have a big barrel to grow ginger in, so you always pick fresh king.
Thank you for your blog it is probably the most useful food inspiration for me, I’ve only been in Thailand once, when I was 13 (1996). For me I wasn’t so inerested in party or cultural tours at that age, but the food, it made me impressed for life. It made me think If thailand is only a 5% sweidish incomes, poor country (even more poor then), still they make every food so much better than in Sweden. Even the simplset thai food would be considered a great marvel in sweden and people would paay almost anything for it.