Thai restaurants are a relatively new addition to America’s restaurant landscape. While they don’t have the stateside longevity of other ethnic cuisines, Thai restaurants have quickly gained popularity in the last decade or so. Today, you’ll find Thai restaurants in cities of all sizes and even in suburban strip malls. Most of them are independently run with a few locations (or just one) in the same geographic area.
While there are no Thai chain restaurants to date, restaurateurs have noticed the mass appeal of Thai flavors. So it’s no surprise that Thai dishes and flavors are being added to the menu in a variety of restaurants, including P.F. Chang’s, Pei Wei Asian Diner, Noodles & Company, and even California Pizza Kitchen, which offers a Thai-style pizza. From pad thai, the favorite noodles dish on nearly every Thai menu, to Thai-inspired salads and pizzas at family restaurants, Thai food has developed a strong following in America.
On the Menu
Thai cuisine is often compared to Chinese cuisine, though the similarities don’t go much beyond the preparation method of stir-frying, the central role of rice and noodles, and a cadre of similar vegetables. As for end results, Thai food differs substantially due to the use of many different herbs and spices. In fact, in terms of taste, Thai food more closely resembles Indian fare with its use of aromatic flavors and spices, such as coriander, cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon, to name a few. The similarities among these three types of cuisine make sense because India and China are both Thailand’s neighbors.
Thai cooking is generally light and healthy, but fat does creep in from various sources, though not nearly as much fat as you’ll find in Chinese food. Most Thai appetizers are deep-fried and many entrées are stir-fried. If you frequent a particular Thai restaurant, ask what type(s) of oil they cook with. Make sure they say “no” to animal-based fats (such as lard) in favor of vegetable oils.
Another source of fat is coconut milk, which is used frequently in Thai cuisine to create dishes with curry sauces. Coconut milk, similar to coconut oil, contains saturated fat, as well as a hefty dose of calories. One-quarter cup of coconut milk—the amount you might have in a Thai curry dish that you split in half—contains 110 calories, most of which are from saturated fat. To limit your intake of this unhealthy ingredient, limit the amount of dishes with coconut milk you eat, such as curry entrées and some soups.
The sodium content of Thai food can run high. The spicing and flavor profiles of Thai food are not as dependent on soy sauces as Chinese cuisine. However, it is not uncommon to see soy sauce and/or salt added to main dishes, soups, rice (other than steamed), and noodle dishes. Some Thai sauces, such as yellow bean paste, shrimp paste, and fish sauce, also add sodium to dishes.
People with diabetes should be on the alert and realize that, in similar fashion to many Southeast Asian cuisines, a small amount of sugar is used in many Thai dishes. On average, 1 teaspoon to 2 tablespoons of sugar might be added to a dish. Some sauces, like the sweet soy sauce used in the noodle dish pad see ew, have a bit more sugar than others. Sometimes, Thai people use palm sugar in their cuisine. If you feel that your blood glucose generally rises after eating Thai meals, adjust your insulin (if you are able), limit certain items that add sugars and starches to your Thai meal, and/or use your favorite portion-control techniques to eat less of the higher-carbohydrate foods.
Thai dishes in sit-down restaurants are generally made to order. This makes special requests easy to grant; don’t hesitate to make them. Family-style eating is commonplace in Thai cuisine. So, don’t feel compelled to order an entrée just for yourself. Practice the key portion-control strategy of splitting or sharing a few menu items among your entire dining party.
The Menu Profile
Appetizers
Thai food features its fair share of deep-fried appetizers, but there are also a handful of healthy options available. Try fresh basil or vegetable rolls (the ones that aren’t fried), or meat or chicken satay. Just be on guard when you dip your appetizers into the tasty sauces. Peanut sauce, served with satay, is loaded with fat from the nuts, whereas tamarind sweet-and-sour sauce is high in sugar. Dip lightly or use the chile sauce that is often on the table at Thai restaurants to add a flavor kick to your appetizer.
As is often the case with appetizers, many Thai appetizers are deep-fried and dense in fat, including Thai rolls, tod mun, crab Rangoon, and stuffed chicken wings. However, portions are small and it’s common to split appetizers. If you’ve got a few calories to spare and dining partners to share with, enjoy a few tastes. If not, just dive into a bowl of clear soup and a healthy entrée.
Soups and Salads
Soup is filling and can take the edge off your appetite. Thai soups can be divided into two groups: those that are healthy and those you should avoid. Clear-broth soups like tom yum koong and poh taek have a bit of protein (from poultry or seafood) and great flavor thanks to Thai spices such as lemon grass, chile paste, and lime juice. The calorie count of these soups is low, but they are high in sodium. The soups to avoid (unless you’ve got calories and fat grams to spare) are tom ka gai, which is a chicken coconut soup, and any other soups with coconut milk. When in doubt, read the soup’s description to determine whether its base is clear or made cloudy with coconut milk. Stick with soups you can see through.
Salads are unusual in some Southeast Asian cuisines, like Chinese, but these items are regulars on Thai menus. Thai salads range from simple garden salads to salads that combine less common ingredients such as green papaya and dried shrimp. Salads often combine vegetables and/or fruit with beef, chicken, seafood, or a combination of proteins—yam yai, for example, is a combo of shrimp, chicken, and pork. Nam tok, a steak salad, is devoid of the types of vegetables we often associate with salads. It really consists of mostly steak with herbs and a lime-based marinade.
Thai salad dressings are light and made with spices such as lemon grass, chilies, lime juice, and sometimes peanut sauce. Remember to ask for dressing on the side when you order a salad. Or request a few slices of fresh lime to use instead. Try eating a salad while others are digging into fried appetizers. Or you can order a seafood or beef salad as your main course with a bowl of steamed rice on the side; split it with your dining partner(s) as one of the group’s entrée choices.
Entrées
You’ll find many healthy entrées in Thai restaurants. Some load on the vegetables and are cooked in light sauces. Think about which source(s) of protein you want—chicken, shrimp, scallops, fish, beef, or pork. Try to choose a lean protein to reduce your fat intake. Complement a protein-dense dish with a vegetable-rich side dish. Or choose a vegetable or tofu (bean curd) dish for a meal that is light on animal protein and saturated fat. However, if you order tofu, ask them not to fry it.
You may find peanuts, cashews, or peanut sauce added into or on top of many Thai dishes. If you want to skim fat grams from your meal, tell the waitperson to leave these ingredients in the kitchen. But you can leave them on if you want a few grams of healthier fats. If calories are a prime concern for you, lighter basil, chile, and lime juice sauces are lower-calories options.
Curry dishes in Thai restaurants often contain coconut milk, which adds saturated fat—the artery-clogging variety of fat. It’s best not to overload on curry sauces, whether yellow, green, red, or mussaman, which is the thickest type of curry. Order one curry dish to share among a group and make an effort to minimize the amount of sauce you spoon onto your plate. On the plus side, curry dishes can be packed with veggies. Make sure the curry dish you choose is full of vegetables by reading the menu descriptors or asking your waitperson. You can always ask to add more of one vegetable or another to your dish. Thai kitchens usually have plenty of broccoli, green beans, eggplant, and carrots, because these are frequently used in other Thai dishes.
Rice and Noodles
Several rice and noodle offerings are up for grabs in Thai restaurants. Hands down, the best choice, which arrives with your meal without even a request, is steamed brown rice (or white if you can’t get brown). It’s long grain, often with a sprinkling of jasmine grains. Fried rice is also usually available. Thai fried rice is a bit lighter in fat and color than most Chinese versions of fried rice. Like Chinese fried rice, Thai fried rice comes in varieties such as vegetable, pork, seafood, or combination. Stick with the vegetable if you must and eat only a small amount. There’s no doubt about it, you up the fat and sodium content of your meal when you switch from steamed brown or white rice to fried rice.
Pad thai is the omnipresent Thai noodle dish. It consists of noodles, stir-fried with finely chopped peanuts, bean sprouts, egg, tofu, scallions, and often a slice of lime on the side. It’s served either with tofu or with chicken or shrimp. Like fried rice, pad thai gains fat and sodium in the cooking process. A whole serving of pad thai at P.F. Chang’s has more than 3,500 milligrams of sodium. Wow! If you order pad thai, ask that the restaurant limit the use of soy sauce and plan to enjoy a smaller portion of the dish, supplementing it with steamed vegetables. Several other noodle dishes, such as drunken noodles, are often on the menu. They all spend time in a wok being tossed with oil and sodium-containing sauces, so use the same strategies suggested for eating pad thai. Be on the lookout for hidden sugars in Thai noodle dishes, such as the sweet soy sauce used in the noodle dish pad see ew.
Desserts
The dessert listings in most Thai restaurants are minimal and easy to pass by. You might find rambutan or lychee nuts, which are common Southeast Asian fruits, and puddings or custards. The rambutan and lychee nuts are fine, but a nice, relaxing cup of coffee or tea might just make a satisfying end to your meal with fewer calories.
Drinks
Most Thai restaurants offer Thai iced coffee or iced tea. Don’t be fooled into thinking that these items are just like regular coffee or tea. They contain plenty of sugar and milk or cream, so you are better off resisting these beverages. For tips on choosing healthy beverages in restaurants, see Chapter 9.
Nutrition Snapshot
Green-Flag Words
Ingredients:
• Chile, chile paste, crushed or dried chilies, chile sauce
• Basil or basil leaves
• Bean curd (tofu)—sautéed, but not fried
• Chicken
• Fish sauce (high in sodium)
• Fish, shrimp, scallops, squid
• Green beans, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes
• Green papaya
• Lemon grass
• Lime juice, Kaffir limes
• Mint or mint leaves
• Napa cabbage, bamboo shoots, black mushrooms
• Pineapple
• Soy sauce (high in sodium)
Cooking Methods/Menu Descriptions:
• Barbecued
• Basil sauce
• Braised
• Fresh
• Lime sauce
• Marinated
• Sautéed
• Sizzling
• Soup made with clear broth
• Stir-fried
• Thai salad
Red-Flag Words
Ingredients:
• Cashews
• Coconut milk
• Fried tofu
• Peanuts, ground peanuts
• Roasted duck (skin and fat are usually left on)
Cooking Methods/Menu Descriptions:
• Crispy
• Curry sauce
• Deep-fried
• Fried
• Golden brown
• Mee-krob (crispy noodles)
• Curry sauce (red, green, yellow, massaman)
• Served with peanut sauce
• Soup made with coconut milk
• Tamarind sauce
Healthy Eating Tips and Tactics
• If you order an appetizer, choose nonfried options or clear-broth soups.
• Don’t overload on curry sauces. Order one curry dish to share among a group and make an effort to minimize the amount of sauce you spoon on your rice or noodles.
• Ask for extra plates to make sharing easy.
• Use chopsticks to slow down your eating, particularly if you haven’t mastered using them.
• Takeout boxes are aplenty. Request one (or more) to wrap up half your meal before you dig in. Enjoy the leftovers for dinner the next night.
Get It Your Way
• Use a bit of chile sauce on your appetizer in place of tamarind or peanut sauce. Chile sauce contains very few calories.
• Ask what kind of oil is used to prepare your foods. If coconut oil or lard is the answer, request that vegetable oil be used instead.
• Request that salt and soy sauce be used sparingly in your dishes.
• Replace beef or pork with leaner sources of protein, such as tofu, chicken, scallops, or shrimp. And ask that your protein be sautéed rather than deep-fried. Remember deletions, substitutions, and additions are easy to make.
• Double up. Ask that double the amount of your favorite vegetables be added to your dish.
• Give your dish a kick. Ask that your dish be made with the heat (spiciness) equivalent of two or three chilies. This is a great way to add lots of flavor to a dish, especially after you cut back on the oil or other sauces. Added bonus: the strong flavor may keep you from overeating.
Tips and Tactics for Gluten-Free Eating
• Most authentic Thai cuisine is naturally gluten-free. Most dishes are made with rice or rice noodles and rice spring roll wrappers, but ask someone to make sure.
• Check to see if the dish you want contains soy sauce. Traditional Thai soy sauce is gluten-free, but some restaurants may use Chinese wheat-based soy sauce. Ask about the fish and oyster sauces as well to be sure they do not contain wheat.
• Coconut milk is gluten-free.
Tips and Tactics to Help Kids Eat Healthy
• Order à la carte for or with your child (depending on age). Chicken satay, steamed noodles or rice, and steamed vegetables make for a kid-friendly meal.
• Try tofu as the source of protein. While it’s not often thought of as “kid food,” its mild flavor and texture and mouth feel lend it some serious kid-appeal.
• Order clear-broth soups. Thai soups, like other Asian soups, are often served with a ladle-like spoon that kids get a kick out of. Plus, Thai soups are a great low-calorie way to start a meal and take the edge off a child’s hunger.
What’s Your Solution?
You often order Thai food and have it delivered to your home, especially when you are having dinner alone and don’t have the time or energy to prepare a meal. The crab Rangoon and pad thai have been your go-to favorites and you usually eat the full serving while unwinding in front of the TV.
What tweaks can you make to this routine to help it better fit with your new healthier-eating strategies?
• a) Order the fresh spring rolls (not fried) instead of the crab Rangoon.
• b) Request that the pad thai be made with less oil and soy sauce and ask that they leave the peanuts off.
• c) Ask for the same changes to the pad thai as above (option b), plus request that they add an extra veggie of your choice to the dish.
• d) When you place your order, ask them to split the pad thai into two containers.
See the end of the chapter for answers.
Menu Samplers
Menu Lingo
• Bamboo shoots: an oriental vegetable commonly found in Thai entrées. They are light in color, crunchy, stringy in texture, and very low in calories.
• Basil: known as horapa in Thailand, this herb is used mainly in leaf form in Thai dishes. Several types of basil are common in Thai cooking.
• Cardamom: a member of the ginger family. Cardamom seeds are often used in curry mixtures and other dishes, either whole or ground.
• Chilies: various types of chilies are used in Thai dishes, depending on heat level of the dish. Red and green chilies are common and are used whole, chopped, or ground into paste for sauces. Chilies add zip with almost no calories. Chile icons on Thai menus often denote the level of heat in dishes or how much chile is used.
• Cilantro: a member of the carrot family. It is also called Chinese parsley or coriander (it’s the coriander plant leaves). Cilantro is widely used in Mexican, Caribbean, and Asian cooking. Cilantro looks flat like Italian parsley but the leaves are more delicate.
• Coconut milk: a liquid extracted by grating fresh coconut (not the liquid from inside the coconut). Coconut milk is used for marinating foods (such as satay) and for making sauces, such as curry sauces. It is high in saturated fat and calories.
• Coriander: dried coriander seed is the main ingredient in curry mixtures. The seeds and leaves (cilantro; see above) are both essential flavors in Thai cooking.
• Cumin: another fragrant spice important to curry mixtures. It is used either as whole seeds or ground.
• Curry: a combination of spices—not a single spice as is often thought—used to flavor dishes and sauces. Different spice and food combinations create the green, red, and mussaman curry mixtures common in Thai cuisine.
• Kapi: a dried shrimp paste made from prawns or shrimp that is commonly used to flavor many Thai dishes.
• Lemon grass: also known as takrai in Thailand, this is an Asian plant whose bulbous base is used to add a lemony flavor to many soups and entrées. It is usually cut into strips when used in dishes, and it is fibrous in nature.
• Lime: known as makrut in Thai. Lime leaves or the juice of Kaffir limes are commonly used in soups, salads, and entrées.
• Nam pla: a fish sauce used like soy sauce in Thai cooking. This thin, salty, brown sauce brings out the flavor of other foods. It’s high in sodium.
• Nam prik: also called Thai shrimp sauce, it is used to flavor many Thai foods. Nam prik is made from shrimp paste, chilies, lime juice, soy sauce, and sugar.
• Napa cabbage: also referred to as Chinese cabbage, it has thick-ribbed stalks and crinkled leaves.
• Palm sugar: a strong-flavored, dark sugar obtained from the sap of coconut palms. It is boiled down until it crystallizes.
• Scallions: also called spring onions, these are white, slender, and have long green stems. Usually, they are chopped into short or long pieces and stir-fried into dishes.
• Soy sauce: is used in many Thai dishes to add a salty flavor and is made from soybeans.
• Tamarind: an acidy-tasting fruit from a large tropical tree that is used for its tart flavor.
• Turmeric: the spice that lends the yellow-orange color to commercial curry. It is a member of the ginger family.
What’s Your Solution? Answers
a) Good choice. While preparation methods vary, the fresh spring rolls generally have half the calories and fat of the crab Rangoon, which is deep-fried and stuffed with cream cheese.
b) The kitchen will prepare your dish as ordered, so requesting less oil and soy sauce is a reasonable way to improve the nutritional quality of your dish. If you’re watching your calories, skipping the peanuts can help a bit.
c) Yes, please! While a heavy dose of vegetables isn’t common in pad thai, bok choy, broccoli, or any vegetable you like makes a nice addition.
d) When you are eating alone at home, it can be tough to find the willpower needed to keep from devouring the whole serving. Asking the restaurant to divide the meal for you makes it easier to just pop one container directly into the fridge to eat for dinner the next day. Postponing your TV watching until after your dinner, so you can focus on savoring the flavor of your food, can also help.