Intro

Pad Krapao. The cornerstone of “I don’t know what to have for dinner”. The reasons why Thais love it so much is that the dish is simple and it hits a lot of notes. Sweet, savoury, spicy, aromatic. Sometimes even texture. Pad Kaprao is any protein you throw in with Thai Holy Basil, garlic and of course plenty of chilli.

Many recipes exists out there but I’ve honed in on using the laziest set of ingredients and the most opinionated of sauce dependencies.

wkpedia/pad-kaprao wkpedia/holy-basil

The Protein

At home, the ubiquitous Pad Krapao is made with pork mince, not too lean and not too fatty. The selection criteria is based on preference. For example, my favourite protein here would be crispy pork. But let’s be honest, if you spent 2 hours cooking crispy pork you’re just going to end up devouring that instead of going one layer deeper. Unless you made a shit load then you should’ve invited me over.

Protein selection is important because the way of cooking them will be slightly different, beef mince pairs better with dry chilli and white pepper where with pork you can use whatever you want and it will generally taste good enough.

Use beef if you know wtf you’re doing otherwise use pork

wkpedia/crispy-pork youtube@drunken-chef/beef-kaprao youtube@delicious-cook/pork-kaprao youtube@bankii/crispy-pork-kaprao

Sauces & Ingredients

The sauces and ingredients we need are the following, they are essential this is the lazy version already so buy the damn things.

Fish Sauce

megachef fish sauce

Quick tier list for you:

Megachef Fish Sauce Golden Cap
Tiparos Fish Sauce
Squid Premium Fish Sauce (Also Golden Cap and deceivingly similar to how Megachef looks)

One of these would do you good. If you have a green cap Squid fish sauce throw that in the trash and go buy one of those I mentioned.

If your taste buds haven’t been enlightened by one of those fish sauce yet you are massively missing out. For no reason. One bottle of fish sauce last for ages, that shit is fermented. Treat yourself please.

I haven’t tried Vietnamese fish sauce so good luck if you’re using that.

wkpedia/fish-sauce taste test inlcuding viet fish sauces youtube@krua-dot-CD/thai-fish-sauce-review

Palm Sugar

mitrpol palm sugar

No need for tierlist here most will work, although I’ve had best success using Mitrpol palm sugar and even their palm + coconut sugar mix. The palm sugar is something Thais used back in the day, it was more generally available than caster sugar and in my humble opinion taste 10000x better. It is not sickeningly sweet, it caramelises exteremely well, it even adds a nutty aromatic to your dish. The coconut curries you’ve had in Thailand (traffic light curries) are all made with palm sugar and that recipe has not changed.

wkpedia/mitrpol-group

Pad Krapao flavouring

What I just wrote here might sound like sacrilege - it is also highly contradictory to the elitist stance on sauces I’ve displayed thus far. But dude, I’m just trying to eat good flavour fast.

You should avoid the Lobo brand, their Laab flavouring is quite good but that bar is low. Most of the stuff I’ve tried is school canteen tier. Then again, I’ve had thousands of Kaprao so maybe you feel differently.

Take the shortcut bro trust me.

MSG!?

rosdee thai msg

I am glad that we have figures like Uncle Roger who advocates for the usage of MSG. This shit is straight out of street vendors playbook. If you think it’s a cheat code you would do well to remember that this stuff is ubiquitous in Asia. Street vendors got Ayinomoto bags bigger than your rice at home. Yet, that doesn’t mean every street vendors is good. MSG is required to even enter the competition. So use the damn thing.

One more thing I will say here is the Thai MSG is quite good. It does add saltiness and alter the flavour profile by a bigger margin than regular MSG. I would not recommend that you use these 2 together. Pick one.

Thai Holy Basil (Optional)

Thai Holy Basil is not Thai Basil

Noobs beware, one is Kaprao (กะเพรา) and the other is Horapa (โหระพา). Both are used in different dish and using different herbs does mean you’re making a different dish even if the ingredients are the same.

If you are wondering what makes them holy; don’t ask me ask the taxonomer. It’s not like the plant grows near temples or anything.

Anyway, this is optional since our lazy ass have the flavouring jar already and they contain traces (yes traces) of the correct herb.

Etc.

You will also need dark soy sauce - Thai preferred of course, dark + sweet, try Deksomboon brand. Garlic, Bird Eye chillies and white pepper.

Summary

God tier:

Megachef Golden Cap Fish Sauce
Mitrpol palm sugar + coconut sugar mix (I love this shit)
Non-Lobo Kaprao flavouring
Thai MSG (Rosdee)
Kaprao
White pepper

Decent tier:

One of the mentioned fish sauce
Demerra Brown Sugar
One of: (Flavouring, MSG, Thai MSG)
One of: (Kaprao, Horapa)

Don’t even bother:

Squid green cap fish sauce
White Sugar
None of: (Flavouring, MSG, Thai MSG, Kaprao, Horapa)

Cooking

Gonna keep this brief here:

Chopping board

De-leaf your herbs
Chop garlic
Chop chillies

The Wok

Throw in galic & chilli mixture, allow time til fragrant then add protein
Keep going until the juices of the mince comes out and keep going even further, we’re not looking for a saucy Kaprao, we want almost reduced sauce.
When no more meat juice is released, add your Kaprao flavouring, fish sauce and palm sugar.
Keep stirring and taste to see if you fucked up with the saltiness.
When the flavour is balanced, top it up with your MSG. Do like 2 sprinkles.
Add dark soy sauce to change colour, this is quite strong so use only little bit.
Finish with white pepper

Eat it

Precise instructions? Bro just put stuff in a pan and make sure they’re not raw. Too salty, add sugar. Too sweet, add salt. Too salty AND too sweet? You’ve fucked up.

Great condiments

When you serve over rice, a crispy yolky fried egg on top is god tier. Prik nam pla is also great condiment if you’re maximising your sodium intake. Me? Top the egg, splash of Maggi sauce. Little bit of chilli oil in the rice. Done.

Thai’s relationship with food

It is funny to mention this now that I think about it. We’re definitely not as serious when it comes to Thai food. You might think using the flavouring to make kaprao is akin to breaking pasta in half while boiling. But remember, the reason the product exists is because of Thai people. We make it easy for us. Hell, if you go on a Shopee or Lazada you can see ready made Kaprao sauce, freeze dried crispy pork just reheat, literal full meals frozen from some industrial kitchen. The most important part is taste, second is convenience.

shopee lazada lazada/krapao-sauces lazada/crispy-pork

Food is cheap, it’s the reason why Thais are so happy. It’s also the perception that food should be convenient. Hence the reason we have 7-11 everywhere with ready made food. And the ready made products available globally.

7-11 thailand

Now that I’ve finished making justification for myself and totally convincing you guys to take the same shortcut as a subset of Thai people who actually cook. Go enjoy your newly bloated kitchen with sauces you might use if you remember this recipe occasionally.

I will be posting more recipes later down the line using the same building blocks we’ve established in this article.

London

So you want to know where tf to get good krapao? I gotchu.

thaitho-soho

Kaprao

Century Egg Crispy Kaprao (aka Kai Yeaw Ma Ka Prao) - 10/10
Beef Kaprao - if you don’t like century eggs

Others

Som Tum - get Som Tum Thai since it’s the most palatable one for the uninitiated
Tom Saab Kra Dook Moo - tender pork ribs, fresh herbs, spicy sour soup
Moo Ping - pork skewers, slightly sweet comes with sauce, very tender

great-thai-noodles-soho