Thai Sauces and Dips

The Thais enhance their meals with sauces and dips. It is typical to find an assortment of them collected on the table at one time. The flavors range from sweet and tangy to hot and spicy, from subtle to complex. Sauces allow diners to adjust the taste of a dish to their own liking.

One of the most common condiments found on a table at Thailand is "Poung Phrik," พวงพริก. This consists of different containers of four seasonings: ground dried red chili flakes (Phrik Pon), granulated sugar, fish sauce and chilies in vinegar. Diners sprinkled one or more of these condiments on their food to adjust the flavor to their taste.

Thailand also has many pre-made sauces and dips to accompany their dishes. There are two general terms used to describe these sauces and dips. Nam Chim/Jim, which are dipping sauces, and Nam Prik, sometimes described as a chilli paste, is usually a little thicker.

Prik Nam Pla, a sauce that combines chillies (Prik) with fish sauce (Nam Pla) is a Thai staple, “something you’d find at every table, whether you’re dining at a restaurant or in a Thai local’s home.”

Nam Jim/Chim

“Nam Jim”, the Thai dipping sauce. Nam Jim is supposed to be thick and syrupy, with flakes of fresh red chili floating in it. You can choose the level of spice by selecting the type of the chili and adding the seeds and membrane, or not (seeds and membrane are where the heat resides most in the chili pod, but the shell also contains some heat as well).

The first and most popular is the “Nam Pla Phrik”. As you may know, Nam Pla is fish sauce and Phrik is chili. Fish sauce 1-2 tablespoons Lime juice 2-4 teaspoons Bird’s-eye chili, sliced or crushed (depending on how you want to eat them) 1-10 pods The amount of chili used depends on the size of the chili and how spicy you like it.  You just mix them all together.

Nam Pla Phrik is the most common “Nam Jim”. you can add to an omelette, stir fried meat with holy basil (Pad Ka Praw), stir fried meat with onion and chili (Pad Phrik), Pad See Ew, Drunken Noodles (Pad Kee Mao), Fried fish and many, many more. I would say this is good for the stir-fried dishes (but not limited to) because it adds the salty and sour taste together with the spicy or hot from the chili.

Nam Phrik (Thai: น้ำพริก, pronounced [nám pʰrík])

Nam Phrik are staple dishes in the Thai meal set. Sometime they are called relish in English. Nam phrik (chili paste) is any of the spicy, chili-based, hot sauces typical of Thai cuisine. Usual ingredients for nam phrik are fresh or dry chilies, garlic, shallots, lime juice or other souring agent (tamarind, tomatoes, sour fruits, etc.) and often some kind of fish or shrimp paste. In the traditional way of preparing the sauce, the ingredients are pounded together using a mortar and pestle, with either salt or fish sauce added to taste. Salty ingredients include fish sauce, salt, fermented soy bean, fermented tofu, salted fish, shrimp paste, etc.

Nam phrik is normally served on small saucers placed by the main dish as a condiment or dip for bland preparations, such as raw or boiled greens, fish, poultry and meats. Nam Phrik is often eaten with fresh vegetables. Depending on the type, the region and the family that prepares it, nam phrik may vary in texture from a liquid to a paste to an almost dry, granular, or powdery consistency.

It should be known that instead of khrueang kaeng or phrik kaeng, the words nam phrik can also be used to denote Thai curry pastes such as in nam phrik kaeng som for kaeng som or nam phrik kaeng phet for kaeng phet.

“Nam Prik is a sort-of comfort food, something Thai familes eat every day,” says award winning chef and author Ian Kittichai. Traditionally, fish sauce and shrimp paste are core ingredients of these condiments but, in India, the chefs replace these with alternatives to accommodate vegetarians. Kittichai explains: “Typically, fish sauce and shrimp paste are used to prepare curry sauces. It’s tough to find a substitute that delivers the same flavours. In my experience, the closest vegetarian substitute for fish sauce is a mushroom-based soy sauce, and instead of shrimp paste, I use salted yellow beans in oil (which is also used in Chinese cooking) and blend this into a paste.”