Pro Chef Tries to Make Pad Thai Faster Than Delivery

[Producer] All right, Chris.

I mean, you know, I'm not one

to project too much confidence.

I'm just trying to beat Andy. Let's just face it.

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[phone ringing]

[Employee] Hi.

Hi, I'd love to put in an order for delivery, please.

[Employee] All right, one second. Please be patient.

[hold music echoing]

This is like the most stressful part.

[hold music echoing]

Maybe I'll just, like, start prepping some ingredients.

[Employee] All right, sorry to keep you waiting.

What can I get for you today?

One order of Pad Thai with shrimp, please.

[Employee] Delivery should be around 30-35 minutes.

Great. Thank you very much.

That was just so intense. Okay.

[timer beeping]

Were you keeping track of the clicks? I bet you weren't.

How many do you think I have now?

[Producer] 17.

That was 30. What an honest guy, right?

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First step is I want to prep my noodles.

So this is 16 ounces of noodles.

I'm gonna do half, just 'cause it wouldn't suck

to have a little extra just in case, right?

Always leave it with, wow. Great.

That's a great, great start.

This is what was so fascinating about talking to Shayne.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, of course. Happy to chat with you.

What should I be trying to achieve?

So right off the bat, a few things to keep in mind

with the way that Pad Thai's been designed:

you want your finished product to have sort of like

a sweet, a salty, and a sour component.

Your sauce should be a tight glaze

rather than sauce that kind of clings to the noodles.

With the noodles, you want noodles that are soft

but still are chewy and still have a bite to it.

Speaking of the noodles,

my temptation is always to want them boil them.

I mean, I'm an Italian, you know, we boil things.

[Shayne] Soaking your noodles in some water,

room temperature water, for about 20-30 minutes

until they get softer.

I tend to use hotter water

than most packaged directions would indicate.

You know, time is a little bit of the essence here.

So as long as I achieve the right texture,

I mean, I think it's okay, right?

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I'm gonna cool these right down

and it still has like quite a bit of chew to it.

All right, now we need

to make some simple syrup from palm sugar.

We're calling this two ounces.

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Things you should not use your knife for:

cutting palm sugar.

So I'm gonna do two ounces of hot water.

I want to prep some of my mix-in ingredients.

Your finished product would have a sweet,

a salty, and a sour component.

Thai restaurants in the United States will kind of

have their own take on it.

Some people will do oyster sauce or a dark, sweet soy.

I think that your best bet here will be

to use some of the palm sugar,

fish sauce, and tamarind, respectively.

Tamarind's gonna add lots of sour.

Fruity, very sour, good bit salty.

All right, so chopping some peanut.

I feel like you don't want full peanuts in Pad Thai.

[groovy, upbeat music] [bowls clinking together]

Scallion's gonna add that sort of onion-y element.

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Just slicing these kind of in half,

just so that they cook a little bit more quickly,

but leaving the tail on.

Time check is 19 minutes remaining.

I'm questioning my decision not

to have another coffee before this,

but living with the choices that I've made.

So almost all this palm sugar's been dissolved.

If I had a little more time I would throw it on the heat,

but I think it's okay.

I'm gonna do one and a half.

So this is kind of like my flavor base, you know, my sauce.

[Cory] The sauce looks kinda loose.

Well, I think you're the only person

who thinks that, Cory,

because I think we're gonna be just fine.

Just need like a touch more sweet in there.

It's gonna cook out, and I think we're gonna get

that clingy kind of glazy situation we want.

So I've got that. Throw our shrimp right on there.

Oh, we need chilis. Preserved radish.

I have it pre-cut here.

It's salty, it's fun, it's very textural.

I love how she described it as, like, radish jerky.

That's so accurate.

If you can't find preserved radish,

I would probably just skip it.

I don't think anything really hinges on it, you know?

[Producer] Is there anything that [indistinct]?

[distant knocking]

That better not be our guy.

No.

[Man] Hold on, hold on, hold on.

[sad music]

Well, I mean, I definitely did not see this coming.

[door opening] [sad music]

It's like, we must've gotten somebody's, like, hoagie,

or something, but no, it's the [beep] shrimp Pad Thai.

This is great. That's cheating.

[Producer] Were they cooking during your call?

What's happening?

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Hey. Still there?

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We've been on the phone for four minutes and 45 seconds.

I have no idea what happened.

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I mean, this comes together super quickly.

The shrimp should cook through just a couple minutes.

You know, once you have everything lined up and ready to go,

it's pretty simple and it comes together very quickly.

I made a little bit extra noodle.

Seriously, do they, like, literally have a cannon

that they just shoot the friggin' Pad Thai

out of at that place?

I just feel like I was set up.

All right, so sauce is going in.

Tamarind, simple syrup made from palm sugar, and fish sauce.

How are they interacting to create the kind of,

like, the glazy effect that you're talking about,

but without creating soup?

So to get that tight glaze,

you're gonna need some high heat and some good timing.

So your sauce is there for seasoning.

It's there for moistening the noodle

and finishing off that cooking process.

And then here's the key: the sauce is gonna take care

of the cooking process for you.

So I'm just gonna crush up some of this chili,

chop preserved radish, mung bean sprouts.

The texture of the noodle should be changing right now

and getting a good bit softer.

Ah, man. Falling apart here.

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Sometimes you just have to eat with your hands, you know?

[food sizzling]

Ooh, I'm gonna throw in some scallion

just to kind of brighten it up a little bit

and then use the rest to finish it.

We're good. I have seven minutes left.

So I've finished at 23 and I had to take a break

to go get delivery, so, just saying.

[groovy, upbeat music]

Great, so, done, plated, everything's done. Finished.

Five minutes to spare.

I mean, they got this thing here so fast.

[distant knocking]

That better not be our guy.

It's just mind-bending.

So anyway, even though I was under time,

you know, sometimes, that's just how it breaks.

So they've got cilantro in there.

Their peanut looks, like, amazingly fine.

That's pretty fun.

So they seem to have certainly gotten, you know,

the kind of, like, the clingy kind of vibe to the noodles.

They are kind of breaking apart a little bit.

I think, you know, obviously steaming out in here.

This is not helping anything.

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[Producer] Did you bring your own chopsticks?

I did. I brought my own purple titanium chopsticks.

Snow Peak makes 'em. They're really fun.

The main thing that I'm noticing between these two:

the delivery noodles definitely broke apart quite easily.

I think, you know, just kind of steaming out

in the container, a little bit darker than mine,

but otherwise, I mean, it achieves, you know,

having kind of a clingy sauce on the noodles,

but without any kind of pooling, you know, kind of,

what word am I looking for?

There's not really any excess sauce here.

I think you could say that.

Really curious to see the flavors side-by-side.

I'm gonna taste first before doing any lime.

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It's a little sweet. It's not super sour.

You get a little bit of tamarind, but I get, like,

quite a bit more sweetness from this.

The texture of the noodles is bouncier than you'd think,

considering they kind of broke apart.

Yeah, overall flavors, they're there.

They're just a little bit more muted.

You know, this is a Pad Thai I certainly would love

to have a little sidecar of chili flakes,

a little extra fish sauce would be great,

and certainly some lime.

Already, the lime just wakes the whole thing up.

So here's mine.

We have like a good kind of level of cling with the sauce.

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That one chili added a lot of heat.

It's funny: it tasted really sour to me when it had just,

you know, finished cooking on the stove.

But now I'm craving a little more sour.

I added some lime there. A lot more tamarind flavor here.

Definitely a lot more fish sauce.

It's just, it's different.

This is a dish that I think it's like,

the clock is literally ticking.

The second it comes out of the pan or out of the wok,

you want to eat it as soon as possible.

I mean, look, we've all eaten Pad Thai that's like,

been in the takeout container a little bit too long,

you know, and yet, like, I think a great Pad Thai

made and eaten right away, I think,

just offers so much more.

I'd say if anything, I think the fish sauce

is a little strong here

and/or bump up the sweetness a little bit more.

I think they're both really good.

I do like the texture of my noodles.

They're certainly holding together.

They still have some bite to them.

On a scale of one to 10,

I'd say my dish is maybe an eight for me.

I think the flavor balance could be just

a little bit tweaked there, but overall,

I'm really happy with how it came out.

In terms of what I did with my dish,

I think I hit on, you know, all the things that, you know,

Shayne and I discussed.

I think the noodle prep is super key

so that they're pretty springy and hold together the sauce,

the level of cling, you know.

If you were to take all the noodles off the plate,

there's no excess sauce here.

I think that's one of the real revelations with this dish.

It's that, you know, the ingredients are so flavorful, like,

you know, less can be more, truly.

You know, I would certainly use

slightly different quantities if I did this again,

but I think that balancing of sour, sweet, and salty

is definitely represented here.

Like, I just want the flavors a little louder here,

but maybe just a touch quieter here.

I think this was certainly a success from the standpoint

of, like, I had five minutes to spare.

There is no doubt you do not need more than 30 minutes

to make a great Pad Thai.

In fact, you might need, you can make it

and deliver it in 15 minutes.

[Producer] You feel like you beat Andy?

[Chris chuckling]

Only because you brought it up.

I certainly beat Andy's time, and I think we all know

that that was the true objective today.

Well it, when I clearly didn't beat delivery,

it certainly became about beating Andy.

So by that measure, that was definitely a win.