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A Thai Pantry

Basil

Thais use leaves and sprigs of fresh basil as finishing touches on curries and soups.

Chilies

Both fresh hot green chilies and dried red chilies provide heat to many Thai dishes. You can find a variety of chilies in Asian markets.

Cilantro

Also known as fresh coriander and Chinese parsley, cilantro is an essential ingredient in Mexican cooking, and therefore widely available in the West. Thais adore cilantro for its flavor, aroma, and beauty. They toss it into spicy salads, dipping sauces, and steaming soups just before serving.

Cilantro Roots

Outside Southeast Asia, cilantro roots have no culinary use, so the plants are often sold with the roots trimmed away. Thai cooks know their value, and mash the roots into an aromatic and flavor-packed seasoning paste with garlic and peppercorns to start most curry pastes and to season many marinades, sauces, and stir-fried dishes.

Coconut Milk

Coconut milk provides cooks in tropical climates the luxury of making creamy sauces, soups, and sweets without benefit of grass-chomping dairy cows to provide the basic ingredient. Look for unsweetened coconut milk in cans in supermarkets.

Curry Pastes

The curry pastes of Thailand are convenience foods with character. Pounded to a smooth, pungent paste from an array of herbs and spices, they are cooked in coconut milk or oil to release their flavor and perfume, and then simmered in coconut milk or broth with meat, fish, or seafood.

Curry Powder

Curry powder is the same spice mixture sitting on your supermarket shelf and a standard minor seasoning in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia.

Dark Soy Sauce

This seasoning sauce of Chinese origin is a staple in the Thai kitchen, where it is valued as much for its color and depth as for its salty flavoring. Though it is thicker than ordinary soy sauce, dark soy sauce has a heavy, but less sharp flavor.

Dried Shrimp

Thais adore these tiny flavor-packed crustaceans for their over-the-top salty flavor, chewy texture, warm color, and cute spiral shape. Boiled, salted, and sun-dried, this shelf-staple food from the sea provides protein, texture, and flavor to many dishes.

Fish Sauce

Fish sauce is the essence of Thai food, bold, salty foundation on which its extraordinary flavors are built. Made from salted anchovies, and is a clear brown sauce.

Five-Spice Powder

Thais use five-spice powder in several hearty dishes with clear Chinese roots. Mixtures vary a bit, but usually include star anise, fennel seeds, Szechuan peppercorns, cloves, and cassia (a type of cinnamon).

Jasmine Rice

This naturally aromatic long-grain rice grows in abundance in the verdant patchwork of paddy fields that blanket Thailand's central plains.

Lemongrass

Thai cooks love the lemony taste and aroma of fresh lemongrass, using it often in delicate soups, salads, and as a basic ingredient in curry paste.

Long Beans or Yard Long Beans

Imagine a string bean snaking its way on out to a length of 18 inches or more, becoming bluish green, sweet, and so flexible you could tie it into a knot. Common in Thailand.

Oyster Sauce

This Chinese pantry essential is standard in Thai kitchens, pried for its intense, salty flavor, its velvety texture, and the handsome brown color it provides to food. It is used in mildly seasoned stir-fries and sauces.

Palm Sugar

Boiled down from the sap of the palmyra palm or the coconut palm. They are used to sweeten or simply for balance and complexity in the seasoning of many savory Thai dishes.

Pepper, freshly ground

Thai people have been heating up their cooking with peppercorns for centuries before the chili pepper appeared on the culinary horizon.

Rice Flour

Made from ground jasmine rice or sticky rice, this flour is mixed into a thin batter with tapioca flour to form an appealing, chewy, noodle-like pancake in the street food favorite crispy omelet with oysters and bean sprouts. Can substitute with equal parts all-purpose flour and cornstarch if need be.

Rice Noodles

A supply of dried rice noodles should live on your pantry shelf. These noodles keep for months.

Roasted Chili Paste

Garlic, shallots, and small red dried chilies are roasted over a charcoal fire, pounded to a rust-colored paste, and then fried in oil until dark, smooth, and loaded with fiercely delicious flavor. Used in stir-fries, sauces, and soups.

Sriracha Sauce

This crimson puree of dried red chilies, garlic, vinegar, and sugar is a simple, superb way to add chili heat.

Sticky Rice

This unique variety of rice contains an unusual balance of the starches present in all rice, causing it to cook up to a pleasing sticky texture.

Tamarind

Tamarind liquid is made by soaking ripe tamarind pulp and pressing it through a strainer to create a thick, luscious puree that is earth brown, smoky, sour, and sweet. Thai cooks routinely use plain white vinegar or freshly squeezed lime juice in place of tamarind liquid.

Tapioca Flour

Sold alongside rice flour in Asian markets, this flour is valued for its many uses in preparing traditional sweets and snacks.

Turmeric

This knobby cousin of ginger is beloved not for its flavor, which is quiet mild, but for its outrageous pumpkin orange hue, which transmits vigorously to food and everything else it touches.

Wild Lime Leaves

These sturdy, smooth, and shiny leaves from the wild lime tree impart Thai soups and curries with a spectacular burst of intense, exotic citrus flavor and perfume.