Pad kee mao or drunken noodles are a very popular Thai stir fry dish. You can make it with any type of meat, or even tofu, and can use any Asian green that you prefer. For our recipe, we used bok choy. What makes these noodles so special are the bird's eye chilis, garlic, Thai basil, fish sauce, dark soy and oyster sauce combination that packs a savory punch!
Serves: 2
Prep Time: 15 min
Cook Time: 15 min
Ingredients
2 tbsp vegetable oil or rendered fat
7 oz skinless pork belly, sliced into thin strips
10.5 oz fresh rice noodles
1 cup sliced Asian greens
5 garlic cloves, ground
3 birds’ eye chillies (Thai chili peppers), ground
1 cup Thai basil
Sauce
4 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 ½ tsp white sugar
Process
Use a mortar & pestle to grind up the garlic and chilis into a paste.
Heat a wok over medium/high heat. Add vegetable oil into the wok, and move the wok so that the oil covers the surface. If you do not have a wok, you may use a large frying pan.
Add the paste and fry for about 30 seconds. Add the pork and fry until mostly cooked.
Add the greens and cook for 1-2 minutes or until the greens have softened and the pork has cooked and browned a little.
Add the noodles into the wok (see notes), making sure they are separated so that the sauce you’ll add next will coat the them evenly.
Add the sauce ingredients. Stir fry until fully incorporated.
Remove the wok from the heat and toss in basil.
Enjoy!
Tips & Modifications:
We used the whole package of noodles (2 lbs), 1.3 lbs of pork butt (skinless), and 1.5 cups of Thai basil.
To prepare the noodles, we had to let the noodles warm up to room temperature, cut it into 1 inch thick strips, and microwaved it for 1 min to 2 min (as needed) and in a little bit of water so that we were able to mostly separate the noodles. They separate much more easily when warm and heated. Be patient with this process.
We also tripled the sauce recipe.
Our recipe modifications could serve 4 people.