Spicy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)

Thai Basil Chicken is one of the most popular Thai street food dishes. This dish is typically served with rice and topped with a fried egg. If you love spicy foods, you'll love this dish. One of the main ingredients is Bird's eye chili aka red Thai chili pepper. While they are small in size, they're super spicy! They're much hotter than a jalapeño and 1/2 as hot as a habanero. We used 4 peppers to start for this dish.

This recipe is adapted from Mark Wien's "Authentic Thai Basil Chicken" recipe.

Ingredients

For the Fried egg:

• 1 egg

• 2 Tbsp cooking oil for frying

For the basil chicken:

• 4 Chicken thighs, cut into small pieces

• 4-8 red Thai bird's eye chilies, depending on your spice level

• 1 handful of Thai basil, removed from stem

• 5 cloves garlic, pressed

• 1 teaspoon Oyster sauce

• 1/2 teaspoon Dark soy sauce

• 1/2 teaspoon Light Soy sauce

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• 1 Tbsp cooking oil

Instructions

Fry the egg:

1. Heat 2 Tbsp of cooking oil in a wok or large skillet on high medium heat. Don't allow oil to smoke.

2. When oil is hot, drop the egg in. As you see it sizzling and bubbling up, use a wide spatula to scoop the oil and splash oil on top of the egg to fry it even more. No need to flip the egg over unless if you want to. Lower the heat.

3. Once the egg is cooked (tastes best with a runny yolk in our opinion), remove from the stove, transfer to a plate and set aside.

Basil chicken:

1. In a mortar and pestle, grind garlic and Thai chilies together - it brings out the flavors and oils. If you don't have a mortar & pestle you can finely mince it with a knife. If you can't handle the spiciness, you can remove some of the seeds before grinding!

2. In a bowl, whisk together oyster sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and sugar. Save for later.

3. Heat 1 Tbsp of cooking oil on high heat.

4. Add garlic & chilies. Stir fry them for a couple seconds or until fragrant and don't let it burn.

5. Toss in chicken and stir fry for about 3 minutes then add the sauce mixture. Mix well for a couple seconds.

6. Once chicken is almost done, toss in a handful of Thai basil into the wok/skillet. Quickly stir fry it with the chicken no more than 5 seconds (otherwise the basil will over cook and lose its flavor).

7. Remove the wok/skillet from the heat. Transfer to plate and top with the delicious fried egg that you've prepared. Enjoy!

Notes:

If you make this recipe, we'd love to see it! Tag us at @NY.Foodie on your stories & posts.