Hot Thai Kitchen: Demystifying Thai Cuisine with Authentic Recipes to Make at Home

I now have the print edition of Pai's book in addition to the Kindle version that I bought when it was first released and I am very happy. I visit Thailand every year so my interest in Thai food grows with each visit and Pai adds to my interest with her You Tube videos which are always great to watch. Always informative and always great food. This book is the natural extension to her video success and I love it. The print version, for me, is so much better than the Kindle version (although that made a nice, relaxing read whilst hiding from the Cypriot sun under a parasol earlier this year). The print version is better for me as a 'cook book'. It will be taken into the kitchen, will probably get grubby through use which inevitability leads to food fingerprints everywhere. I am a bit of a cookbook junkie and nearly always come back from Thailand with at least one Thai Food book. I must have 35 or 40 in my collection including a couple of the massive coffee table type books by another author. This will be my new 'go to' Thai cookbook for most of the time simply because of its authenticity and fairly easy to replicate recipes. Fortunately, there is a Thai Supermarket about 10 minutes away so getting the ingredients is easy. On to the book itself. For the new to Thai cuisine reader I like the idea of having the first part of the book 'Understanding Thai Cuisine'. It is good for me too even though I am familiar with Thai food. Understanding the culture of eating is vital and Pai is very clear with her information. Many cookbooks go straight into the recipes but Pai is different. The first recipe doesn't appear until page 93. She has tried to make the understanding of the eating culture, ingredients and equipment as important as the recipes (which they all are). There are some 'typical Thai' recipes along with many others but for me Pai has produced a very good Thai food 'manual' that beginners and enthusiasts alike will enjoy and benefit from. As for the recipes themselves Pai has included a good selection of dishes, fish, meat, vegetable, sweet, soups and Curries (obviously). I had a couple of questions for Pai and she very graciously replied-quickly too. One was about a piece of equipment she uses in her videos and the other was about Chicken or Prawn 'Thai Curry' which every single tourist will have tried and noticed that none of them taste the same from restaurant to restaurant to Street vendor. Her advice was that although Thai food has a basic structure per dish, recipes are just a guide. Great advice because I have asked my Thai friends for recipes and keep being told "It is only Thai Curry it is easy". Use Pai's introduction section as much as the recipe pages...

I've never been much of a fan of cook books, because they tend to be rather abrupt and point-and-click in nature. The end result may be great, but if you can't engage with and relate to the process then it's not fulfilling. Great today, but forgotten by tomorrow, if you will. If that's what you want or relate to then don't worry, this book is overflowing with great, easy and fast recipes and Thai cuisine is mind boggling when it comes to value for money. As someone else said you can try before you buy via youtube and the website and appreciate the quality of her recipes yourself. But there's far more to this book than that. If you've ever watched Hot Thai Kitchen on Youtube you will know that the reason for its success is not just the delicious finished dish on offer, for you can get great recipes for any dish instantly these days. The reason HTK has become such a monstrous runaway success is the character and personality of Pailin ensures every single episode is packed full of insights, lessons and tips that give you an understanding of each component of every dish which means you actually know what you're doing and aiming for when you try it. The fear with this book was whether that magnificent, priceless knowledge would be lost in text format and become another point-and-click cook book. Turns out, this is not really a "cook book" per se. Sure, there's 140+ pages of fantastic recipes, and they are written and formatted in a way that captures the HTK magic such that you could not confuse them with any other chef. But then there's the 90+ pages wealth of information about Thai cuisine and food culture. No, this is not really a cook book. It's more like a ticket to a Thai culinary odyssey. If you have any interest in cooking, in Thai food, or even simply in Thailand itself then there's only one conclusion to be drawn: Beautiful, fascinating, delicious...you must buy this book!

Very easy to follow and also has qr codes to watch videos.

Really comprehensive Thai cook book. Unlike other books this one explains every ingredient and does not tell you just to buy the various sauces and ingredients from a supermarket. I like to make everything from scratch and this allows me to.

This book contains a lot of information about Thai cuisine, which I found interesting, however it contains some, what are called 'specimen recipes' which are intended to be used as a springboard for your own versions. Not really a book for beginners.

This goes into details about Thai basic cooking essentials and structures of the various dishes. The author does have at heart to enable you to do your own Thai inspired cooking, not just 'doing the recipes'. The book is excellent for that. Of course there are all the recipes you would expect, but almost 1/2 of the book is on these essentials and structures of Thai dishes and all explained very clearly, with direct links (through QR codes that you can scan right on the page with your phone) to her videos that will go into more details on a particular topic. Highly recommended if you really want to understand what you are doing when trying to cook a Thai dish!

I love Thailand. I have holidayed there for the last nine years Experiencing the cuisine for the first time was like touching the Obelisk in 2001, A Space Odyssey! I loved it from the very first mouthful and have been awed ever since, One of my friends who lives in Thailand recommended Pailin's book and said I would love it and I do! I have made my very first Thai dish from it tonight...Thai Green Curry with Braised beef and Jasmine rice and it was to die for 🥰 I am indebted to you, Pailin for this work and I look forward to working through all the recipes. Oh and the foreword discusses so much detail of the history, development and cooking advice relating to Thai cuisine! and lastly, please excuse my preparation table! Tidiness was never a strong point 😂

I have been following Pai's YouTube channel for quite some time and was very excited to learn she had written a cookery book. When it arrived, I wasn't disappointed. It's a beautifully laid out book in full colour with glossy pages. There are so many different recipes, so something for everyone's taste plus a section for vegetarians and vegans. Pai explains the recipes very clearly and the front of the book has a detailed section on Thai ingredients and food culture. For anybody that likes to cook Thai food, this is without doubt the best recipe book I have found.

I use it for cooking!

Bought as a birthday gift for my partner who has recently become obsessed with her youtube channel and has been attempting recipes every few days. They absolutely adore it! The pictures are beautiful, there's soooo much information and it's clearly written with a lot of care and passion. I particularly like all the background information, only half of the book is recipes, and there are plenty of those, but the other half is vitally inportant info on the culture, ingredients, terms, prep methods, all the complicated stuff you need to be able to really get the most out of the recipes. This is very valuable and makes it absolutely worth the money to have all this in one beautifully laid out book, with clear text, and gorgeous photography. Sure you can google some recipes, but this book provides much more than that. I'm sure we will be eating even more Thai food from now on.

I was really excited to finally receive my copy of Pailin's book. It's been on pre-order for months and I've long been a fan of her amazing cooking videos for awhile, so today was truly a great day when it finally arrived. What I was really pleased with to see immediately is that Pai did an excellent job at putting a substantial amount of information in the first few chapters of the book that go really far in explaining a lot of the foundation of Thai cooking. As you may know from her videos, she is an excellent teacher in that she communicates really clearly what she is doing, how to do it correctly, and most importantly, WHY she is doing it. (and all with a dose of charm!) Cooking isn't just assembling a bunch of ingredients in a bowl. Knowing how and when to add an ingredient and what that ingredient is contributing to the recipe in terms of flavor and texture is very important. I think that is why Pai can help you make good recipes great when you are actually preparing them. There is a lot of info on the various ingredients, from herbs to sweeteners to all the unique sauces that are used. And yes, we all wish we had a friendly Thai grocer down the street, but for most of us in N. America, that isn't common, so she gives some good tips on finding ingredients or when she believes "Educated substitutions" (good word choice) or even omissions are ok for the sake of the recipe. You should never let a lack of finding a key ingredient keep you from trying to learn these recipes, so she will help you overcome! There is also a section specifically on vegetarian and vegan dishes which is really great as that diet is quite common and Thai food lends itself really well to being easily offered in a veg variation. I see a lot of the great recipes I have already tried from her videos featured in this book, but was also pleased to see even more new ones as well as foundation recipes like curry pastes and stocks. You will see some nice mention of the region of dishes which is good, because I think that's one of the main missing pieces of information that many new to Thai food don't get at first. They don't often get to learn, that the cuisines in the North and South are dramatically different in style from each other and that curries don't just come in green or red. (see JUNGLE curry!) I am sure anyone new or familiar to Thai cooking will really love this book. One other cool feature of the book is that there are QR codes throughout it that allow you to quickly view a video on said topic right on your phone from the Hot Thai Kitchen site as you are reading! Ingenious! Something else that I have not seen before in a cooking book is a small table on each recipe page that shows a "breakdown" on the ingredients in terms of what their role is. (sauce, aromatic, flavor) This is a cool feature and, as Pai says, she wants to help you understand how the recipes are assembled so that you can mix and match your own components to start to make your own dishes! This table really helps to do that in my opinion. Enjoy the recipes, technique and beautiful images that fill this great book!

Must buy an learn about Thai kitchen it's good for chef

I have been following "Hot Thai Kitchen" for two years, so I decided to get the cookbook, and it is awesome! I was expecting it to be a list of recipes but it is much more than that. In the first part, an introduction to Thai cuisine is made, setting up the whole schema needed for understanding how this cuisine works and for being able to cook dishes properly. The second part is about knowing the ingredients and the last part about the recipes. I have been reading the book for two weeks and it has supposed a thrilling experience, an authentic journey through Thailand and its cuisine. It is not only the fact that the photographs included are amazing, but also that Pailing knows how to reach the reader. The accessible lenguage, together with the tips and recommendations of an authentic thai chef are the perfect combination to get a deep insight into Thai cuisine. I rate it with 5 stars and I firmly believe that this cookbook is worth all the effort and time that Pailing has invested on it. Highly recommedable.