SAHD Recipe – Spaghetti Pad Kee Mao

Hey everyone! Welcome to another installment of SAHD recipes. Today, we’ll make Spaghetti Pad Kee Mao aka drunken noodles. This is a Thai & Italian fusion dish. Usually, Pad Kee Mao is made with wide rice noodles similar to the Pad See Ew Noodles. But creative chefs in Thailand tried various different ways to make it a bit different. This is the first time I tried cooking this dish and I enjoyed it a lot. The spaghetti noodles from Trader Joe’s were nice and chewy. RB40Jr enjoyed it too. However, Mrs. RB40 didn’t like it much. She thinks it’s too weird. She doesn’t really enjoy mixing cuisines. Oh well. Anyway, try it out if you’re stuck at home. You might like it. I made this dish with salmon, but you can do it with any kind of meat. I think shrimps are good with this too. Ok, let’s cook! *I made a video for this recipe. Prep time: 10-15 minutes Cook time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

• Spaghetti noodles – The imported Italian spaghetti noodles from Trader Joe’s are perfect for this dish. They’re more chewy and have a better bite than the usual noodles from the supermarket, really nice.
• 10 cloves of garlic – smashed or chop in the food processor.
• 1 to 10 spicy chili – I used just 1 homegrown Thai chili. smashed. In Thailand, they’d use more.
• 1 bunch Thai basil – You can get this from the Asian market. If you really can’t find Thai basil, then use regular basil.
• 2 sticks celery – chopped.
• 8 oz salmon – I think shrimps would work well too.
• optional bell pepper – cut into strips.

Sauce

• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1.5 tablespoon oyster sauce

Marinade salmon for 10 minutes

• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon michu or any cooking wine
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Equipment

• A wok and a spatula.
• Or you could use a big Lodge carbon steel skillet like I did. That worked pretty well too.
• A pot to make spaghetti.

*I add these links to Amazon so you can see what the ingredients look like. These items should be much cheaper at your local grocery store.

Cook the salmon

• Cook the salmon in a skillet and set aside. Add a pat of butter at the end if you’d like.

Make the pasta

• Bring water to a boil in your pot. Add a little salt.
• Add the spaghetti and cook it al dente. Don’t overcook it. You want a little chew.
• Drain and reserve a little pasta water.

Cook Pad Kee Mao

1. Heat up your skillet. Add a little oil.
2. Add the garlic/chili paste. Stir around for about 10 seconds.
3. Add celery and bell peppers. Stir around for a minute.
4. Add spaghetti and sauce. Toss around for a minute.
5. Turn off the heat and add the basil. Toss until the basil leaves wilt a bit, maybe about a minute.
6. Done!

Enjoy Spaghetti Pad Kee Mao!

To serve, put the noodles in a nice bowl and put the salmon on top. In the video, I put the salmon in the pan. They’ll break up if you do that. Either way is okay if you don’t care how it looks.

Spaghetti Pad Kee Mao video at Eat by 40!

Kitchen tools recommendation

• Skillets – I love our small Matfer Bourget black steel pan. We use it to cook eggs. It is so much better than any nonstick pan. These carbon steel skillets will last forever, unlike the nonstick pans. We also have a bigger Lodge carbon steel pan. It isn’t as nice as the Matfer Bourget, but it is more affordable. You can’t go wrong with either. Although, if I had to do it over, I’d splurge and go with Matfer Bourget. It’s just nicer and I use the pan very often. It’s worth paying more.
• Knives – My favorite kitchen knife is our 5″ Calphalon Santoku knife. I use it for almost everything. If I need a little more power, then I use our 6″ chef knife. That one is Mrs. RB40’s favorite. You really only need 2 knives in the kitchen.
• Rice cooker – I cook rice very often so a good rice cooker is essential. Many people rave about the Zojirushi rice cooker, but I don’t like the nonstick inner pot. Those nonstick surfaces never last. So I went with the TATUNG rice cooker instead. The inner pot is stainless steel and it should last forever. It makes great rice. They also have a smaller/cheaper 3 cup version. I think we got our cooker when it was on sale.
• Oyster sauce – I recommend the Mae Krua brand. It is high quality and affordable sauce from Thailand. The key is to check the ingredient on the bottle’s food label. The oyster extract should be the first ingredient. Many cheap brands have water and sugar listed first. As defined by the FDA, “the listing of each ingredient in descending order of predominance.” Same with fish sauce. For fish sauce, I recommend Tra Chang, the scale brand. This brand is actually my cousin’s family brand. It’s high quality.

If you like this post, subscribe to our new YouTube channel – Eat by 40! I’ll do cooking demos, share our travel, review eateries around the world, and more. Thank you!