Thai Chile

The texture and flavor of green beans make a great swap for green papaya in this Thai salad.

This Thai salad highlights bold, bright flavors, pairing lacy fried eggs, a punchy dressing, and fresh vegetables.

Bean thread noodles absorb the bright, citrusy flavors of the dressing that’s made with lime juice, fish sauce, and Thai chiles in this Thai noodle salad recipe.

The banana leaf preserves the freshness and juiciness of the mushrooms cooked inside, while perfuming the whole dish with its aroma.

To add earthy heat to your cooking, roast dried Thai chiles in the oven before grinding them to a powder.

If Thai food were laid out as one of those nutritional pyramids they showed you in health class, green papaya salad would be at the bottom, right above rice. In other words: It is fundamental. 

This low-effort, high-flavor tomato demonstrates how the Thai concept of balancing flavors can be achieved in different combinations.

You can store this all-purpose sweet-and-spicy vinegar in clean mason jars, but it is easier to keep it in repurposed glass bottles. Note that this recipe can be adjusted as you like—try using different chiles or other spices like bay leaf.

Add these seasoned peanuts to your som tum.

This vibrantly colored mango curry is authentically Keralan, and one we’d typically pair with a fish curry and accompany with rice.

This sweet-and-sour glaze will work on other proteins like chicken, steaks, or ribs.

Green curry with chicken and eggplant from Chef Hong Thaimee.

Homemade green curry paste has more vivid flavor and aromatic intensity than store-bought, not to mention the freedom to control the spice level. Sopon Kosalanan of restaurant Khao King in, Queens says, “If you get it from a can, I don’t feel like it’s green curry. It doesn’t have the same aromas.” This is the recipe he makes in big batches for his restaurant every day.

This spicy-tangy-funky condiment is delicious on grilled fish, grain bowls, braises, and stews—basically anything that needs a touch of acid and heat.

Chef Sirichai Sreparplarn of Brooklyn's Ugly Baby doesn’t believe in using food processors for making curry paste, but we won’t stop you from using one. He also prefers a blend of two parts shorter dried chiles (prik haeng) and one part longer chiles (prik chee fah), but any Thai chile will work.

Cucumbers are practically all water, so you gotta dress them like you mean it. This hot, sweet, and tart dressing will have them covered.

Larb will not only fill your belly, it will teach you how to balance sweet, sour, salty, spicy, funky, and umami flavors. Larb hails from Laos and gets its addictiveness from the way it stitches together ground meat and crunchy, juicy textures. When you get the balance right, this dish sings, each bite creating a craving for more.

Grilled medium or medium rare, the delicious meat pulls from the built-in skewer (aka the bones), and you salivate even more as you chew.

A simple and refreshing relish for grilled meats. You can make the vinegar and sugar dressing up to six weeks ahead of time (store it in the fridge), but assemble the relish the day you plan to serve it.

This particular kadi sauce is based on the Gujarati (Western India) version of a yogurt-based sauce thickened with gram flour (besan). In that region the sauce is sweet and sour.