Why It Works
- Cooking components in batches keeps the wok hot and prevents unwanted steaming.
- Nam prik pao (Thai chile jam) adds a quick boost of flavor to the dish.
- Oyster mushrooms provide a chewy texture that complements the bouncy shrimp and crunchy long beans.
Goong pad nam prik pao is a stir-fry of shrimp, oyster mushrooms, and long beans glazed with a nam prik pao-infused sauce. If you’ve got a jar of savory-sweet nam prik pao (Thai chile jam) kicking around your refrigerator, you’re in luck, since the dish comes together in under thirty minutes. If you don’t have nam prik pao in your refrigerator, well, you should; it’s a versatile roasted chile paste that can be used as a condiment, much as you would any other chile paste, and it’s also used in quick, delicious stir-fries like this one.
Although nam prik pao is already sour, sweet, and salty and packs a punch, it requires a bit more seasoning when using it as a sauce. For this dish, I use Thai oyster sauce and Thai light soy sauce to amplify nam prik pao’s savory and salty notes, coupled with a touch of tamarind paste and sugar to round things out. I also give the nam prik pao some assistance from fresh ingredients. Since it already contains dried shrimp and roasted shallots, garlic, and chiles, I add their fresh counterparts to intensify the dish’s overall flavor.
This recipe was designed and tested with homemade nam prik pao and Thai seasoning sauces; using other kinds of oyster sauce or light soy sauce will yield a slightly different flavor profile, as will using store-bought nam prik pao. Since every nam prik pao is seasoned differently—I recommend the Mae Pranom brand, which is used widely throughout Thailand—you will have to make slight adjustments to the quantities you see in this recipe.
When cooking the stir-fry, I make sure to add each component separately to the wok, in order to sear them properly, cook them through thoroughly, and mitigate steaming. To start, I sear shrimp in hot oil until they’re nearly done, then set them aside. Into the oil left behind in the wok I toss chewy oyster mushrooms with thinly sliced onion and a roughly-pounded paste of garlic and fresh Thai chiles. After removing the seasoned mushroom mixture from the wok, I pour in the sauce and let it simmer until it’s slightly thickened, then add the shrimp, mushrooms, and long beans, and cook until the sauce is absorbed and the beans are vibrant in color and still crunchy. Finishing with scallions and Thai basil adds a slightly floral and pungent note.
Goong pad nam prik pao should be served with white rice, ideally as part of a larger meal, with something fresh like yam khai do or a som tam Thai and a curry, like a green curry.