• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to after header navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Devour.Asia

Devour.Asia

Connie Veneracion explores Asian food, history and culture

  • Tea
  • Kitchen Tales
    • Pantry Staples
    • Kitchen Tools
    • Cooking Techniques
    • Food Trivia
  • Food Tales
  • Travel Tales
  • Search
  • All Recipes
    • Chinese
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Taiwanese
    • Thai
    • Vietnamese
    • Asian Fusion
    • Instant Noodles (Ramen)
  • Tea
  • Kitchen Tales
    • Pantry Staples
    • Kitchen Tools
    • Cooking Techniques
    • Food Trivia
  • Food Tales
  • Travel Tales
  • Pop Tales
  • About
  • Privacy
  • All Recipes
  • Chinese
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Taiwanese
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
  • Fusion
You are here: Home / All Recipes / Easy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)

Easy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)

A tangy, spicy, salty and subtly sweet stir fry with holy basil and chilies and minced thigh fillets were used in this Thai basil chicken (pad krapow gai or phat kaphrao gai) recipe.

How to Cook Easy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)

What is pad krapow? It’s a stir fried Thai dish. The meat can be pork, beef or chicken. Or dispense with the meat and use shrimps instead.

What cannot be excluded are the holy basil and chilies. Without these two, the stir fry is not pad krapow. 

In this recipe, minced chicken thigh fillets were used. No, not chicken breast. With the mincing and the high heat, chicken breast meat will turn dry before the dish is done.

You can substitute ground chicken thigh meat if that is more convenient but you get better control with the size of the chicken pieces if you do the mincing yourself. It’s not that hard. Just cut the chicken fillets into thin strips, cut across the strips then use a heavy knife to chop until you get the size that you like.

Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)

Connie Veneracion
Easy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai)
Prep Time 10 mins
Cook Time 10 mins
Total Time 20 mins
Course Main Course
Cuisine Thai
Servings 3 people

Ingredients
  

  • 6 to 8 chicken thigh fillets
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 2 bird’s eye chilies
  • 1 one-inch knob ginger
  • 2 shallots or 1 small red onion, thinly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons cooking oil
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • fish sauce to taste
  • large handful holy basil leaves
  • 3 eggs, fried sunny side up to serve
  • rice to serve

Instructions
 

  • Pat the chicken fillets dry with paper towels. Mince the chicken to the size that you prefer.
  • Mince the garlic.
  • Finely slice the chilies.
  • Peel and mince the ginger.
  • Thinly slice (or roughly chop) the shallots or onion.
  • Heat the cooking oil in a wok or frying pan. Saute the garlic, chilies, ginger and shallots or onion.
  • Add the minced chicken. Stir fry until the meat changes color. Pour in the soy sauce and half of the lime juice. Add the sugar. Stir and pour in enough fish sauce to create the sweet-tangy-salty-spicy balance that you like. If you’re aiming for authenticity, the flavor should be more tangy and spicy than sweet and salty.
  • Stir fry the chicken for three to four minutes. Add the holy basil leaves. Stir fry for another two to three minutes.
  • Taste the chicken pad krapow. Adjust the seasonings, as needed, before serving with fried egg and rice
Keyword Spicy, Stir Fry
Looking for Filipino food?Visit CASA Veneracion for modern twists on favorite classics!

If you cooked this dish (or made this drink) and you want to share your masterpiece, please use your own photos and write the cooking steps in your own words.

Easy Thai Basil Chicken (Pad Krapow Gai) Recipe
More Thai food
Thai Fried Fish With Spicy Tamarind Sauce (Pla Rad Prig)

Thai Fried Fish With Spicy Tamarind Sauce (Pla Rad Prig)

Pouring coconut cream into a pot to make Thai chicken coconut soup

Essential Ingredients for Tom Kha Gai

Thai mango sticky rice drizzled with coconut milk and garnished with sesame seeds

Thai Mango and Sticky Rice with Coconut Milk (Khao Neaw Mamuang)

Inside my Asian kitchen

Slices of kalabasa (squash)

Is Kalabasa (Calabaza) a Pumpkin?

Drizzling truffle oil on bread

Truffle Oil: Is It Really Extracted From Mushrooms?

Reusable glass spice jar with airtight lid

How To Store Dried Herbs and Spices

Asian food tales

Dizzying array of food. Food Court, Takashimaya

In Japan, the Art of Discovering Good Food in Every Price Range

Taiwanese beef noodle soup at a food court in Taipei

Demystifying Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Wagyu (japanese beef) at Kuromon Market in Osaka, Japan

The Lowdown on Japanese Beef: Wagyu, Kobe, Matsusaka… What’s the Difference?

Explore Asia

Bus stop in Kyoto

Valuable Lessons Learned When Riding Trains and Buses in Kyoto and Osaka

The lotus is regarded as Vietnam's national flower

Saigon Pre-trip Prep: The Bad News

My daughter's dragon tattoo

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

August 1, 2016 : All Recipes, Cooking Thai, Poultry
Previous Post: « Kitchen spider for scooping out french fries What is a Kitchen Spider? How is it Used?
Next Post: Ham Bone is Your Best Friend When Making Broth Ham bone »

Sidebar

Asian Pop Tales

Liu Yifei as Mulan | Image credit: Disney

Mulan

Scene from “The Lunchbox” Image credit: Sony Pictures Classics

“The Lunchbox”: When a 100-year-old Lunch Delivery System Goes Wrong

A typical Japanese breakfast of rice, egg and miso soup at the Coquelicot Manor in "From Up on Poppy Hill" | Image credit: Netflix

“From Up on Poppy Hill”

  • About
  • Privacy & Usage
  • Full Archive

Everything © Connie Veneracion. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.