"Eric's" Pad Thai

Eric has been talking about this amazing pad thai that he made a year ago...well for about a year now and so we finally went to the store and bought stuff to make it.  We realized that we started getting Asian food almost every Sunday since football season ended (which is when we have "Chicago day" and watch the Bears and eat deep dish from Wyman's) so on Sunday we went to H Mart and got ingredients.  It wasn't until last night that we actually made it though.  Since Eric has become my amazing lawn-man, he mowed instead of cooking and I made dinner, which is completely fine with me! I've never made it before so it was a new experience.

So here we go...LOTS of ingredients in this one!! We made it a little easier by buying a rotisserie chicken on chicken sale wednesday from Whole Foods.  Here's the list:

Rice noodles

Eggs

Chicken

Fish sauce

White wine vinegar

Green onions

Peanuts

Olive Oil

Shredded carrots

Onion

Mushrooms

Thai chilis

Sugar

Peanut butter

Bean sprouts

Lime

Before making this dish, soak the noodles in lukewarm water for about 30-40 minutes.  This will soften them but not cook them.  

Once you have everything, it's pretty easy to make.  I took this opportunity to whip out the wok...that I don't think I've ever used before but it seemed appropriate since I was making Asian food.  To start, I heated up the chicken in some olive oil and browned it a bit. Since it was already cooked, I didn't really have to do much to it.  I then removed the chicken and put it in a bowl and set it aside.  Adding more olive oil to the wok, I let it heat up until it got pretty hot and steamy and added the eggs and cooked them through until almost stiff. When they were done, I took them out and put them in the chicken bowl.  

At this point, I added more olive oil and once again let it heat up to a pretty good temperature.  The peppers went in and cooked for about 3 minutes to release the flavors.  Be careful with these because they definitely will make you cough a bit and the pop so beware of oil splatter.  

When the peppers begin to look a little "roasted" and brown, throw in the veggies.  I put the carrots, onions, and mushrooms in one bowl and dumped them in at this point.  Leave the bean sprouts until later.  Cook everything until the onions look like they're close to transparent and the mushrooms are soft.

Once the veggies are done, add the chicken and eggs back to the pile.

Mix everything through and then add the noodles and the sauce, which is made up of white wine vinegar, fish sauce, and sugar.  Give everything a good mix.  At this point, my wok was pretty dang full so it got a little messy but it all gets smaller once the noodles cook more and soften.  

When there are about 3 minutes left, add the bean sprouts and give them a quick mix and the pad thai is basically done! 

The peanuts and green onions go on top at the end with lime juice from 1 lime.  I gave it a quick mix before serving.  

Mine came out really salty so I added some water to it to tone it down.  I added the water on high heat so it would cook out quickly, to not make the noodles soggy.  I would highly suggest tasting the fish sauce before using it, which I did not do.  Just don't smell it b/c it smells really bad.  

It didn't have the dark color that a lot of pad thais have but it just so happens that Throwdown with Bobby Flay was doing pad thai this morning and he added soy sauce for color...which does not belong in pad thai anyway so I think it's ok not being as brown.  Minus the saltiness, it tasted like pad thai so I'd say it was pretty successful.