With a combination of spicy, sweet, sour, salty, and umami, Thai cuisine has a unique way of creating meals that will give you all of these sensations at once. Thai food is one of the most popular cuisines in the world because of its uniqueness, which comes as no surprise to anyone who’s ever eaten it before! Learning to cook Thai food takes a lot of skill, hours, patience, and will utilize different unique styles of cooking.
These amazing combinations of flavors and tastes that make up Thai cuisine as we know it today developed over time. In the 13th century, the heart of Siamese cuisine included various types of meat and seafood with sides of local vegetables, herbs, and spices, consisting mainly of garlic and pepper.
All meals were served with rice, but unlike other ancient cultures of the time, Thai people did not limit themselves to the borders of their country. The nation took its cue from neighboring countries such as Burma, Indonesia, India, China, and Malaysia, implementing foreign ideas into their own cooking styles, utensils, and ingredients. A lot of Thai curries will include Indian spices, and Thais use the steel wok from Chinese cuisine.
Thais will take concepts or ideas from other countries and put their own stamp on it using their local resources. For example, the Chinese introduced egg noodles to Thailand, but the Thais created the popular rice noodles that are made today since rice is plentiful in their country.
You can see the Chinese wok being used even as you walk through the streets of Thailand. Burmese chili sauces are commonly used even today, as well as the curry inspired flavors of Malaysia. You can also find some Thai red curry dishes called Penang after the Malaysian Northwestern state.
Thai cooking grew by leaps and bounds through the sharing of tools, knowledge, information, and ingredients. Thais don’t have a problem about being influenced by other countries and they take delight in sharing the beauty of their own cuisine’s flavors. By taking inspiration from those around them, chefs and foodies based in Thailand have created a number of dishes that are popular throughout the whole world, inspire many to visit the country and learn the special ways of Thai cooking.
Thailand is home to local ingredients such as Thai holy basil, lemongrass, and Galangal, which its people definitely take advantage of for use in cooking. Although Thais will liberally borrow ideas from other countries and spice those ideas up according to their own tastes, they made many Thai dishes on their own as well, using the resources, spices, and ingredients they have in their own backyards.
Learning Thai cooking will teach you some valuable skills, as you will learn how to use ingredients and tools you might never have seen in your life. You won’t just be learning Thai cooking techniques, however. Because Thai cuisine is influenced by so many cultures, you will even learn the cooking techniques of other neighboring countries as well, like how to use their spices in certain dishes and such. Are you looking for the best restaurant in Thailand? Visit Indulge Bangkok today! We have a wide range of Thai dishes for you to try.