Welcoming friends into our home and sharing their first Thai entertaining dinner. They heard many stories about Thailand, which stirred their curiosity for exploration. Between drinks and meals, we shared a lot about Thailand`s culture, food, sights, and places. It didn’t take long for our friends to decide and book airtickets for their very first trip to southeast-Asia. Together, we travelled from the south to the north of Thailand. Sightseeing and sampling a wide range of Thai flavours and local culture.

Hawker stalls

Our friends agreed that even the best pictures, writings, or talks will never be as good as firsthand experience. Curious and excited, they have taken a leap by joining us. Off the beaten track, we enjoy strolling along hawker stalls and trying our favourite food snacks. With a ★Big Smile★: Sit with Thais, do as Thais, and eat as Thais do.

First food trail dish: a popular hawker stall selling Thai Noodle Soup, ‘Guay Tiew Gai’. A simple, soul-satisfying comfort food dish. This is a big bowl with flat-rice stick noodles in chicken broth with fragrant fresh herbs. This stall in Pattaya has all the fresh herbs and vegetables presented as a buffet on the table. Next are traditional seasoning’s of fresh chillies in vinegar, sugar, fish sauce, and dried chilli flakes. You can choose and add the accompaniments, mixing and matching them to your own liking.

Food stall dishes

Second, I just stumbled upon Mark Wiens 100 Thai Dishes to Eat in Bangkok: The Ultimate Eating Guide . Featuring beautiful food images and dish names in Thai script. With the danger of phonetic translations being incorrect, this post is a great help. Going through his list made me very happy to see listings of my favourite dishes too. Just reading brings back many fond memories of places and eateries. Vist Bangkok and do use his post as a reference. Give him a thumbs up!

The heart of all soups is the broth

Third, the heart of all soups is the broth, or stock. I often make a big pot of chicken or beef broth with the Instant Pot cooker. This broth is true golden liquid; pour it directly into glass canning pots. For canning, transfer the filled pots into a 23-quart Presto high pressure canner. After the pressure time you have your own batch of healthy broth without the need of a freezer. It is ideal and easy to pull the canned broth out of my pantry.

Tips preparing noodle soup broth

Final, tips for making your own home broth for a Thai-style version use a base for noodle soups (without salt). Add seasonings into the broth:

2 tbs soy sauce, 1tbs fish sauce and 1/2 tps sugar or to your taste.

Next, cook the rice noodles, sprout beans and shred chickenmeat. Fry garlic crispy and save the fragrant oil to pour on top as a finish. The secret to make it authentic is adding finely diced dried radish. This specific ingredient goes by many names; Mandarin Luo bo gao, Cantonese Choi poh, Hokkien Chye poh. This brings umami with a crunch, it is salty, sour with a little sweetness. For greens next to sprout beans add some stalks of chopped Morning glory (water spinach), chili, and sliced green onion.

Served at the table you always will find extra condiments container. Just as shown in the image all nicely displayed. Use more herbs like cilantro, basil and squeeze of lemon. Enjoy!