Tim McKirdy: Sother.

Sother Teague: Tim.

TM: Did you bring your breathalyzer here today?

ST: I should've, because I know that today we're gonna cover Drunken Noodles.

TM: Our noodles are officially under the influence. Or are they?

ST: This is the mystery that we're about to solve together, and I think we're maybe giving it away already. But Drunken Noodles — I'm excited.

TM: Tell us what they are.

ST: I'm excited to break away and get into a different cuisine set. This is our kind of first foray into this sort of cuisine. Drunken Noodles is Pad Kee Mao. It's a Thai dish — or, well, we'll get into that too. It loosely translates to drunken stir-fry. It's more folklore than formula, because it's a hot, aromatic noodle dish built on wide rice noodles with holy basil, garlic, chiles, a savory sweet sauce, but no booze necessarily. It's not about the noodles being drunken. It's about the consumer.

TM: The consumer, exactly. And that's a great point, and that's a great way for us to really leap into the origin here, because this isn't something like — you know, we'll have some episodes where there'll be a specific restaurant in New Orleans, or there will be a legend around something. Everything that you can really kind of come across for this dish points to: okay, this is Thai cuisine — with Chinese influences. But the name, basically, like you said — there are four theories as to why these are so-called Drunken Noodles. Theory number one: they are a post-drinking snack cooked at 2 a.m. with whatever you have in the kitchen. So the drunken describes the cook and not the dish. Theory number two: it's a hangover cure. You got too drunk the night before, the aggressive heat tears through your dulled palate, and the dish wakes you up — sort of brings you back to life.

ST: A little corpse reviver in food form.

TM: Exactly. Theory number three, as you mentioned: this is a dish that's brought together very fast, very frantically — almost like reckless cooking. Kee mao — you said Pad Kee Mao — pad being stir-fry. Kee mao can mean drunk, can also mean crazy or wild. So this is the chaotic stir-fry.

ST: Oh, okay.

TM: And then theory number four — and this will come into some of the anecdotes that we get into today, or some of the folks that we highlight — is that this is drinking food. This is food that requires you to have glass after glass of ice-cold beer because we're really pushing the heat levels with it. So nothing goes better than a refreshing, crisp beer than something with a lot of high heat, whether it's Thai cuisine, Indian cuisine, things like that. So yeah, but generally — and none of the preparations I saw either — people were adding booze to the dish.

ST: Yeah, no. I didn't see, didn't read — I looked all over the place to see if anyone was taking it towards more literal meaning and getting some booze into the dish, and the answer was overwhelmingly no. I mean, not only overall — none. I could find none. Although, the method of making this dish certainly implies that there's a couple of opportunities that you could put some booze in it if you wanted to, and I think we probably want to.

TM: Yes. Actually, I'll save that for this section. I'm undecided. So we'll debate it out as we like doing on air here. I mentioned Thai-Chinese roots.

ST: Yeah, which shocks me, because I thought this was strictly a Thai dish.

TM: So the wok and the technique of cooking — definitely something that spans a lot of Southeast Asia and East Asia and Northeast — you know, and China. The wide rice noodles that we're using for this — and specifically they are called — do you know the name of this? Sen yai, is that correct?

ST: Sen yai, I believe is the correct pronunciation, yeah. S-E-N, second word Y-A-I. Sen yai.

TM: So these are wide rice noodles. There's no gluten in them, or — there's not, flour-based. And those are Chinese immigrants that moved to central Thailand and Bangkok and would have brought those with them as an ingredient. So that's the contribution to this dish here, as well as some of the condiments that we'll get into.

ST: Got it. I didn't even put that together. I just assumed rice noodles were sort of ubiquitous for the whole area over there. But you're saying rice noodles are specifically a Chinese product —

TM: Brought. And this style of rice noodles as well. So would have been brought by — because they're, you know, and we'll get into that as well, but those, they're very specific, and they're very different to the vermicelli that we so often enjoy and that you'll find quite easily in the supermarket.

ST: I love rice noodles. That almost slippery texture that they have, the chew that they have — I really dig 'em. And when I'm making this dish, I like the ones that are a square. They're almost about the size of your standard Post-it Note. So you have this whole dish full of Post-it Notes. I dig those. I'm not — right, I enjoy also the long noodles, but I like the ones that are like little squares.

TM: I just feel like if I'm ordering a dish where noodles is in the name —

ST: You want a noodle noodle.

TM: I do want a noodle. However, first point of contention for us here —

ST: Uh-oh.

TM: — to explore. So that's, if we call that the origins, one of the folks that sort of would be involved, or one of the folks who I was looking into here — Leela Punyaratabandhu.

ST: Oh, yeah, Leela Punyaratabandhu. I know her.

TM: Yes. So per her research, the original phat khi mao — spelled P-H-A-T K-H-I M-A-O, which is the same as Pad Kee Mao that we're talking about, different spelling, different anglicization — was a noodle-less stir-fry.

ST: There were no noodles at all.

TM: In the Drunken Noodles. And in fact, you can search this dish on YouTube, and there's a clip with Anthony Bourdain. I think it was from 2014. He's in Chiang Mai. And the clip's name is titled — it's pulled from Parts Unknown — "Drunken Noodles Without the Noodles?" And he's recovering from a heavy night, as he has been often. They go to this place where they're like, "We make spicy food for Thai people." These are eight to ten bird's-eye chiles making it into any one serving. And the noodles are not served with noodles at all. They're served over rice, as was apparently traditional.

ST: Well, let's go back to the top. Pad Kee Mao — you said pad is —

TM: Stir-fry.

ST: — and kee mao is drunkenness or excitability or all those things that you said. Nowhere does it say noodles. We've just inserted noodles.

TM: That's been anglicized, yeah.

ST: You know, the poem never mentions Humpty Dumpty being an egg.

TM: We've —

ST: — just decided that he's an egg.

TM: And we've just decided that this stir-fry needs noodles.

ST: Has noodles.

TM: I wonder whether that is to do with the stark popularity and emergence of things like Pad Thai and all of that as well, and it's just an expectation that we have. Although he was having that dish there, but I'm sure he could have got versions of this dish there that have noodles, and we can get into that.

ST: Oh yeah, of course. But I can see that too, right? It's one more step. And again, if I'm in that state of mind — drunken, late at night, hungry — I might just be throwing whatever's in the fridge into the pan, and I'm not worrying about noodles. That's a whole extra step.

TM: And you probably have rice on hand as —

ST: If I've got — yeah, exactly.

TM: — well, if you're in this, you know.

ST: If you live in this part of the world, you got rice on hand at all times. So you've probably got some rice that's already ready to go into the pan as well. I can totally see it. That's hilarious. So this is like a misnomer on so many levels.

TM: On so many levels. So these are Drunken Noodles that contain no alcohol and don't necessarily have to have noodles.

ST: I feel like I've been duped twice. And we haven't even gotten anything on the plate yet.

TM: We haven't even got to the non-negotiable section, where I think I probably should have saved that one — so you went, "Non-negotiable number one, noodles, actually."

ST: Yeah, you should have.

TM: I should have done, but I was getting too excited. That was related to our origin and just one person who I'd looked up there. But I know you've been busy doing some research yourself too, and you've got some great stuff for us here today.

ST: Yeah. I couldn't find a lot of canonical quotes specifically about Pad Kee Mao, but the philosophy I think is repeated over and over in some of the folks that I look to. There's a guy, David Thompson, who wrote the book Thai Food, who states it pretty precisely. "Thai stir-fries rely on balance and speed, ingredients added in a precise order so nothing stews. Pad Kee Mao is a perfect case study." So just talking about how quickly the dish comes together and how the order of operations really is going to have a tremendous effect on the resulting outcome. And I think that's just gonna get echoed over and over throughout this episode and through other things that people have said. I look to Jet Tila, you know, famous Thai-American chef. He's kind of talking mostly about Thai food — both of them are — but we can relate it back to Pad Kee Mao. He said, "Thai food is about layers — salty, sweet, sour, and spicy — built quickly in a wok. Pad Kee Mao leans hard on salty, spicy, and herbal with a whisper of sweet." And then finally I've got one from Andy Ricker. His kind of sums it up, kind of ties both of those two back together. "Respect the ingredients and the heat. Don't overcomplicate what's meant to be immediate." And I think that that is the spirit of this dish.

TM: Right. Whether you're —

ST: The spirit, no pun intended.

TM: The lack thereof.

ST: Yeah, no spirit required.

TM: Whether you're home late at night — I mean, there's nothing quite like that drunken hunger as well. Drunger. Is there — there's no word for it, is there? There's hangry.

ST: Yeah, that's not the same.

TM: Drunkery. There's no alternative for it though, is there? No one's coined that term yet.

ST: I think maybe we should try and do it. Not maybe on the air on this episode, but we could think about it. Like, what is the word for when you're buzzed/drunk and hungry? Tipsy and hungry.

TM: I will need to get myself into that state of mind for that research, just so I can try it out.

ST: Tipsy and hungry, and still motivated enough to do something about it. Other than press a button and have a pizza delivered or throw something in the microwave.

TM: Well, this does speak to a time that both of us certainly lived through, where we didn't have that option or that ability to call takeout when you got home from a night out. It was like, you gotta raid the cupboards, raid the fridge.

ST: Kids are soft today.

TM: They don't even go out. So speaking to one of your folks that you referenced there — David Thompson — got a little fun one for you here.

ST: Yeah, hit me.

TM: David Thompson, Australian chef. And as has been my experience with working a lot of Australian chefs in the U.K. — because they had a very favorable visa exchange program with the U.K. — because of where they're situated in the world, they are so well-traveled in Southeast Asia that when you met chefs that have worked there, they would default to Thai-style cooking and Southeast Asian-style cooking for making family meal, and it was always so good, because they have that experience there.

ST: I never put that together, but I used to work with a dude from Australia, and when it was his day to do family meal, he would almost invariably make Pad Thai.

TM: It's like Brits with Indian food.

ST: Sure. Yeah. Okay.

TM: So David Thompson opened a restaurant in Bangkok called Nahm — N-A-H-M. It was the first restaurant in Asia — first Thai restaurant in Asia — to win a Michelin star, in 2014.

ST: Wow. Michelin doesn't visit Thailand very often, it sounds like. 2014 is very recent history, given how long Michelin has been around.

TM: It certainly is a newer development for them. I was also just wondering — the world's most respected Thai chef in the world's most demanding Thai capital city is from —

ST: Australia.

TM: — Sydney, Australia. And I don't wanna call that the Porco fun fact of the day, because I think there's some weird stuff to be unpacked there.

ST: It's the Porco weird fact of the day.

TM: The Porco weird fact of the day. But first — and I believe it was also placed very highly up on Asia's 50 Best, if not the World's 50 Best when it comes to restaurants. But yeah, David Thompson, by all accounts, something of an authority on this style of cooking. And he's gonna make another appearance for us a little bit down the line.

ST: Excellent.

TM: So are there any more influences, inspirations, things you came across that come into this — luminaries in our Culinary Voices section of the show?

ST: Yeah, I think I picked these three because they had pretty succinct quotes to read out. But the general consensus from everyone that I looked to, both in books and online, is echoed in all of those statements that these guys made — which is to say it's a dish that's gonna come together pretty quickly, and really spike on all of the sort of flavor notes at once. It's gonna attack your palate in such a way that you're gonna get kind of a little glitchy overload of flavor. And I think that's the point of it, right? As you said, it's late in the evening probably. I'm a little bit tipsy, I'm a little bit hungry, I'm maybe a little bit chaotic, and I just wanna get this thing cooked and on a plate and eat it.

TM: So I don't want to encroach on the preparation here, but I think that just to sort of give context and give an idea for the listeners who might not be familiar with this dish or this style of cooking — we mentioned woks, we mentioned fast, we mentioned high heat. This is something that's come up between us before. We've spoken about when — it's like we were both taught in the classical French way. So we start with onions, garlic, mirepoix, maybe tomato paste, deglaze, whatnot. We build our sauces that way. We build our dishes that way. This wok-style of cooking, we're talking about something different. So can you give me a 30-second overview of, like, what is this style of cooking? How does that differ from what we're discussing there, and how does it relate to this dish? Just so people have that in their minds before we get into non-negotiables, because I think that's gonna inform many of the decisions we make there.

ST: Yeah, sure. I think you don't need a wok per se, but if you have one, all the more power to you. You gotta get that thing pretty hot till some wisps of smoke are coming off of it before you go in with your neutral oil of some kind. And then from there you need to be — no dish, no style of cooking, I would say, is it more important to be mise en place ready. And I don't just mean "I've got some stuff chopped on my board." I mean, in this case, I want little bowls so that I can grab them quickly and dump them in all at once. I did have, in my professional experience, a wok station at one restaurant that I worked at. Just a single wok, but this guy could get so hot that the bottom of the wok would start to glow red, and you could put a dish through that thing in less than one minute and have it completely cooked. We mostly did a calamari dish, I recall. We're hitting it with oil, we're hitting it with our aromatics, which in this case would be ginger, garlic, chiles. Those are in there for ten seconds or less, tossing them around as quickly as you can, because you don't want them to sit still. So this dish — back to what you said in one of the four definitions — it's a bit chaotic, so you need everything as mise en placed and as grabbable as possible, because you're gonna be moving real quickly throughout this whole process. And part of that is gonna result in that term that's out there: wok hei. A little bit of wisps of smoke and char are gonna get on the edges of things. You're not burning anything, just keep on moving. This dish is about speed.

TM: Yeah, and speed and movement, because to your point — this is extremely hot. And a lot of these things we're adding in a different order than you would in that French style of cooking. Right? Aromatics, garlic. We're not gonna be sweating down — nothing's getting sweated down. Your garlic is getting cooked off, your chiles. These are things that will very easily burn — if there's not that constant movement.

ST: And it's sort of a double-handed situation. You wanna be moving the pan with one hand while using a spatula of some variety to move the stuff in the pan at the same time. It's this sort of — yes — shaking motion, and the spatula is there to kinda move stuff, but it's also there to stop stuff from flying out.

TM: Well, this is the other thing as well. Again, you and I — I think by natural instinct or training, we would reach for a spatula. What is often being used here is actually a metal implement that is more like something you would use to lift a piece of fish or whatever. Not like a fish slice, but it's on a —

ST: It's a little shovel-looking device.

TM: A little shovel-looking thing. Exactly. And this is with your domed wok. Just final thought for me from this section, and just something we talk about from time to time — your personal associations. Having lived for a short while in Cambodia — and by a short while, I don't mean I went on vacation there once. About a year of my life I spent there. On New Year's Eve one time, I went on this little excursion, walking through — and I think this came up recently actually when we were talking about elephants and what they eat — I went to an elephant sanctuary. We spent New Year's there in a tree house, and it was like a guided tour. And because of where we were in the world, lights went out at like 7 p.m. We weren't seeing the bells that year. And first thing in the morning, ahead of a 10-mile walk we were gonna do or something, which is a crazy way to start the year, especially not hungover either — first thing in the morning, we're talking like 4 a.m. — we had these three or four Cambodian women who were preparing our food for the day and doing exactly that. And I saw it in the street so many times. People using those tools together and the technique. The smell of that, and just bit by bit building the flavor — I'm getting it now — it would have been garlic, ginger, lemongrass, lime leaf, chiles, all of those stuff, and just smelling it coming together. Very foreign for me at 4 a.m. on New Year's Day. But just whenever I think about this process, I think of that. And I think about the stark difference between Southeast Asian cuisine and how they build dishes from the ground up to what we might be used to.

ST: Yeah. I think this also has some precedent from history. Lots of these dishes that are cooked in a wok are typically stir-fries effectively, that are cut into relatively small pieces — be that diced or julienne or what have you, but pretty small — because they can cook quickly, but also because fuel, whatever you were using at the time, was a commodity that was in high demand. So you only had a short amount of time to cook. So you would blast heat to get it as hot as it could get, but then it would take a minute to cook. It's not like you could say, "I'm gonna roast something in the oven for two hours." We got a minute to get this cooked, because we don't have enough fuel.

TM: Street food, you know?

ST: Street food. Let's go.

TM: You can't be — you come back in an hour when your braise is gonna be ready. All right. Fantastic. I think that context will definitely be helpful for folks when we move into the non-negotiables. Before we do that, we're just gonna take a quick break, and then we will be back. All right, Sother. We are back. Non-negotiables. We've already explored one, but let's explore it again — the one you would assume — the noodle. What's your thinking?

ST: You threw me off with that, and it makes me think it shouldn't be on the non-negotiables but on the negotiables list. But noodles, I think for us, for our purposes for this episode — noodles are a non-negotiable, specifically the wide rice noodles. There's two market ways you can buy them. You can buy them dried, or you can buy them fresh. If you can find them fresh, that's the way to go. You don't have to do anything to them but sort of unfurl them and pull them apart. They don't need to be cooked in any other way but the cooking process that goes on in the wok. If you buy the dried ones, you don't need to boil them — you need to soak them in warm water. And, like I said earlier, I like the ones that are kinda square like a Post-it Note. You like the long noodle. I'm game to go either way, to be honest.

TM: I think maybe it's the difference between Pad Kee Mao and Drunken Noodles. But for the purpose of Drunken Noodles, let's say our non-negotiable is sen yai — whether they are fresh or dried, with fresh being preferable for us.

ST: And don't forget, when you get the fresh ones, they come in more than one variety, I'm sure, but they do come in long strips, which you can have noodles, but they also just come in kinda sheets. You can cut them however you want. So if you can find those, do what you want.

TM: Fantastic. One of the things on prep here — and I saw someone doing this, and I thought this was quite useful when it comes to the fresh one. They're kinda stuck cold, stuck together, and wet. So there is a danger of those steaming rather than getting that nice texture and color that we want from this. So I saw someone actually microwave them for like 30 seconds just to help pull them apart — as the first thing they did in their prep. And then left them on the side, kinda just to air-dry. And then by the time everything else was chopped up, they'd dried enough to the point where when they used them in the dish — but I agree with you as well. I feel like this is an ingredient that you can easily just pull apart yourself. But a fun little technique there for people to explore. All right. I'll go with our next — actually, you go next, because I pulled up noodles there.

ST: Oh, you did noodles? Okay, great. I think you need some chiles. I'd like them to be Thai chiles, but we can negotiate on that, based on what you have around you. Don't not make the dish because you don't have Thai chiles. Use a serrano, use something that you've got.

TM: I have down here, when I was thinking about the Bourdain dish earlier — Thai bird's-eye chiles. Four is probably gonna be mild for regular eaters of this cuisine. Probably about right for a lot of — certainly for myself. I know you're a chili head. But eight-plus is what you're gonna be getting served in a Bangkok bar per serving, which is a lot.

ST: It is a lot. And it's also gonna come down to how they're processed for service, and we'll get to that when we do the build. For me, next is gonna be garlic.

TM: Not a non-negotiable for me.

ST: Not a non-negotiable? Garlic and chili — this is the thing about this dish, no?

TM: Okay. Let me back up.

ST: I didn't sway you that quick, did I? Because I was gonna say similar amount. Six to eight cloves.

TM: No, no, no, you're right. It's a non-negotiable. I think I was thinking in terms of — because I had my ingredients listed in order of importance.

ST: Oh, okay.

TM: So let's say yes, garlic, and yes, agreed, similar quantity. Especially as I've just said, this is the base of all cooking in that. And it does add so much fragrance and character. Next one for me is gonna be basil, but it's gonna be a very specific type of basil.

ST: Yeah, what basil?

TM: Holy basil.

ST: That's right.

TM: Holy basil. Goddammit, you pulled me down the basil route. The basil route? The basil root. Holy basil. Krapow.

ST: And why do you have to have specifically holy basil and not, for this Thai dish, Thai basil?

TM: So Thai —

ST: By the way, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just setting you up for the podcast here.

TM: So the difference between them. Thai basil is flat, smooth, will be green in color with purple stalks. And holy basil is gonna be rugged, looking a little bit more like a nettle — or mint, as if mint and basil had an offspring. The Thai basil is sweet and aromatic. It takes the dish in a different direction, whereas holy basil is peppery. It's spicy. It makes me think of beautiful fresh green peppercorns — and that kind of heat. And given that this is a dish that's about heat and spice and pepperiness, that's the way to go. And if you're chucking Italian in there — wow, it's better than nothing, but really, what are you even doing at this point?

ST: I agree 100%. However, I also wanna at least address the listener and say, if you can't find the holy basil, Thai basil will work, regular basil will work, but I would augment them about fifty-fifty with some arugula. That's a little hack that you can — like — get that peppery note but still get that basil-y note. But holy basil is the one to use in this one for sure.

TM: And I saw Jet in one video at least chiffonaded his —

ST: I saw that, and he put it into the sauce.

TM: — put it into the sauce as well as in the dish at the end. But whereas our guy David Thompson —

ST: Was David Thompson, right?

TM: — our guy David Thompson is firmly in the "holy or nothing" camp. I believe Jet was using Thai the whole time.

ST: He was.

TM: And —

ST: I saw that video too, and I thought exactly the same thing.

TM: I was like, "Okay, I can see why. I can see why you would do it." And don't get me wrong, I love Thai basil, but just not for this dish.

ST: All right. If we're going with order of importance of our non-negotiables — up next for me is fish sauce.

TM: I have this as the sauce blend, and once again, I think —

ST: As its whole separate sort of section?

TM: As a non-negotiable. And it's a sauce that needs multiple components. So to me, what I think Jet did a really good job of was demonstrating the different components that this sauce component needs to have. And then I think we can go through those in terms of order of importance, and it sounds like fish sauce is number one for you.

ST: I think without fish sauce, you're missing the mark on this dish in general. So we should talk about fish sauce a little bit too, because there's multiple kinds. You got Vietnamese, which is nuoc mam. You got Thai, which is nam pla. And you got the Filipino, which is patis or — I'm probably gonna butcher this — bagoong? B-A-G-O-O with an accent N-G. Bagoong. Anyway, they all have their different qualities. The nuoc mam is generally pretty clear. The nam pla is a little bit more kinda cloudy, and quite salty. But — it's mostly a Thai dish. We've covered that it's Thai-Chinese, but I think Thai is the one to go with. Nam pla, N-A-M-P-L-A. But again, if you've got some nuoc mam, do not not make this dish.

TM: And the Thai is the Squid brand, correct?

ST: Yeah. It's literally the brand is called Squid.

TM: Yeah, yeah.

ST: Squid brand. And it's got a squid on there. Which is funny, because it's made with anchovies. Some of the Vietnamese ones are made with mackerel, so they have a little bit more of an oily fish quality. But the Thai one is made with anchovy.

TM: So that is bringing to the equation salt and funk — and umami.

ST: Yeah, all those things.

TM: I mean, bunch of umami. For more umami, we'll go back and forth on sauce components until we disagree. Oyster sauce.

ST: Disagree. Well, I don't — so honestly, though, I'm swayable. And here's why I'm swayable. You started at the top, and you revealed to me that it's a Chinese-Thai compilation, even with the noodles being Chinese, so I could be swayed more. I just thought that in my mind, the fish sauce was doing plenty of the heavy lifting, and why would I need oyster in this as well? But the oyster sauce also is a little bit more thick, unctuous, and rich, and it's got a minerality, because it's really about the oyster shells that get soaked in the base of whatever oyster sauce is made from. So I'm swayable. I'll go oyster sauce. We can do both.

TM: Well, also, what we want from a sauce when it comes to beyond flavor — texture and just general sauciness — weird thinking about that on a show called Sauced. But just the sort of looseness of a sauce, you're never gonna be able to add enough fish sauce to get that without making it just — all you're eating and tasting is fish sauce. So you need other liquid components here, and if we can add that to stretch the sauce out a little bit. I'm not talking about like a ragu or like a curry or whatever, but you want a little bit of looseness to this.

ST: Yeah. And so that's where the next one comes in for me, which is soy.

TM: Which soy?

ST: You need two.

TM: Hmm. Okay.

ST: I think you need light soy and sweet soy.

TM: But predominantly?

ST: Probably in roughly equal measure.

TM: No, I would say you're going predominantly sweet — which is gonna be more viscous, less salty.

ST: Right, because it's literally sweetened. It's got sugar in it, and that's what's gonna help caramelize in the pan.

TM: I think they're made in distinct ways.

ST: There's definitely many ways, right?

TM: Because I also have, as a non-negotiable within our sauce non-negotiable, sugar.

ST: Palm sugar?

TM: Specifically.

ST: Yeah. Well, that's the thing — you can go for sweet soy or the Indonesian version, kecap manis. Manis.

TM: Kecap manis.

ST: Yeah. And that one is effectively reduced soy sauce and palm sugar. Also, you can make this on your own. If you've got soy sauce in your house and you got some brown sugar, you're close enough. And I'm beating this horse a little bit too much, so I'll get off of it. But this is a dish you should make with whatever you have. If you're close enough on every ingredient, you're still gonna have something delicious. Even if you're kind of off on every single ingredient. Totally. It's drunken food. It's late-night food. Let's just get something in our bellies that's gonna help us wake up in the morning and not feel like we'd made every mistake we could possibly make. Or as you said, maybe this is the dish you are making in the morning to erase those mistakes.

TM: And if not erase them, just sort of dull their effects —

ST: — or distract you. You can never erase mistakes. You have to live with them.

TM: So — and this was why I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna have sweet light soy sauce or brewed soy sauce," plus palm sugar. Something really stuck out to me that you said once while we were recording — which is that in European or quote-unquote traditional Western cuisine, we really underutilize —

ST: Sugar.

TM: — sweetness and sugar.

ST: We really do.

TM: And it's such a mainstay when it comes to Southeast Asian dressings, sauces. Palm sugar specifically — which was the bane of my life when I worked in kitchens, because we always had — like, we had a Vietnamese dressing on, and we would use this a lot. And it gets so hard, the palm sugar, that you need to chisel away at it and literally use a microplane to grate it.

ST: You don't know how to get around this?

TM: Not, no. Well, can I just say for the record — you're saying "you," but the question by extension is me and everyone else who worked in that kitchen at the same time —

ST: I am.

TM: — because no one else was doing it.

ST: Yeah, I am. What you do is you take that chunk — it's sort of conical in shape, looks like a cone — and you sink that thing in water and leave it for a couple of days. But you always have some of these going. Then the water softens it, and you scoop it out, and all you've added is a little water, which will steam off.

TM: Listen, I just got told. Listen, there were very, very few things in our kitchen where we had defined recipes for —

ST: What'll happen is the sugar will sit at the bottom, and the water's kind of on top. And it'll fall apart. And then you can scoop down below and get it, and only a little bit of water's gonna carry into your pan or whatever you got going.

TM: All right, Jacques.

ST: Listen, you stand in there with your chisel and have fun. I'll be over here making dinner.

TM: Dulling microplanes. And especially when you were trying to do a batch of it. But listen —

ST: Oh, my gosh, yeah. Even melting that stuff is hard to do. You can't even get it in a hot pan with something and try and melt it down. It is microplaning a brick.

TM: So here's something we'll put out there to the listeners and to those premium subscribers. We've spoken in the past about — they've gotten our inspiration on dishes and this and whatnot. We do the recipe card for every dish that they get too. I'm gonna go there — on our Sauced Supercast community —

ST: Supercast.

TM: — if someone reminds me, because I'm saying this now and I'm almost certainly gonna forget, but if someone reaches out to us on Supercast and comments on this episode, I'm going to share this Southeast Asian dressing recipe that we have. Because, all joking aside, this would make it into every single menu we ever did — in a different dish, and it is a showstopper. And now I know how to properly make it with the palm sugar, so it's gonna be so much easier. So listen, if you are a premium subscriber, from myself and Sother, thank you very much. If you're not, but you love dressings, maybe now's your time to consider it. And please, one of you premium subscribers, remind me, because I am ever so forgetful.

ST: Yeah, and while we're here and talking about this — if you're not a subscriber, you absolutely should be. We're cranking out some really fun content. We're having a lot of fun doing it, and we're creating a community that we're slowly building. We've got some more really cool things coming in the pipeline. We're constantly building, because we're brand new, so everything's fresh all the time. And joining us is not gonna be a mistake in your life.

TM: Yeah, totally. Sother, any more non-negotiables?

ST: Non-negotiables? I feel like we've covered the non's, with maybe one exception. I kinda don't want this dish without some form of onion. But I could be negotiated out of it. But then there's a whole bunch of negotiables that I would like to talk about too, or at least rattle off. Yeah, like chunks of fresh green beans, obviously tomato — like cherry tomato especially would be great in this dish.

TM: I think you're missing an actual non-negotiable.

ST: Did I skip one? What did I skip?

TM: And it's not a technique, because sometimes I sneak those by you and you're like, "Oh, I wasn't thinking about the technique." No, I think a non-negotiable is protein.

ST: Oh. Well, yeah. We talked a little bit maybe off air about how — I don't think it's a non-negotiable. So this could just be vegetables. However, I do want protein. That's definitely on my list of things that I want in here. But — you can make this without.

TM: Okay. Let me make a case here for you.

ST: Yeah, hit me.

TM: So the scenario that we're talking about when you would make this dish —

ST: When I'm tipsy.

TM: — vegetables alone, there's an itch that ain't being scratched there.

ST: No, I — listen, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just saying —

TM: So even if your protein is just an egg — I think you need protein in this.

ST: Okay. Well, first of all, egg is not the protein I want in this.

TM: No.

ST: And we did see our boy Jet using egg in his, which I didn't think was the right thing. I think this is a dish that absolutely needs protein for me. Based on what you just said, yeah, there's an itch that isn't being scratched here. However, I don't think it's a non-negotiable. I think this dish can easily be made without. But for you and me, it's a non-negotiable. But when we talk about non-negotiables, it's because it's non-negotiable entirely, right? Yes, I want meat in this. What meat do you want? I've got a few that I want. I don't have to have them all at once, but I like this with chicken thighs.

TM: I'm chicken or pork.

ST: I was about to say pork is the next choice for me. Frankly, also — and you don't hear me say this a ton — I love this dish with tofu. Firm tofu — let's go.

TM: Delicious. I thought you'd go prawns.

ST: I don't love prawns in stir-fry dishes. I don't know why that is, because as you know — and that's probably why you're bringing it up — I am a shrimp lover. I will eat them kind of all the time. There's something about stir-fry — it's probably just that, you know, I think most of the time I'm eating something like this, it's probably something that I got to-go, and the prawns are probably not that great. Prawns/shrimp, right? They're too small. They're rubbery, because they've been overcooked or been in there for too long or whatever. Almost always in these dishes, if I'm ordering it, I'm gonna get chicken — because it's almost always chicken thigh, and chicken thigh can be abused and still be good. And I think that's maybe why I'm even saying tofu. 'Cause it can be just abused and still be quite good.

TM: And it's a vehicle for carrying other flavors. Like chicken thigh — not too much flavor. Same with the pork that we might use. That gets me thinking — what is shrimp scampi if not just Italian stir-fry?

ST: Yeah, agreed. But a little bit slower cooked, right? I think the fast cooking in a stir-fry is damaging to shrimp. There's no real way to not, in my opinion, not get it too — toothsome.

TM: So I wanna bring in another culinary voice for us at this point.

ST: Yeah, hit me.

TM: Kris Yenbamroong. Half-Thai LA-based chef. His restaurant actually revolves around the idea of creating food to facilitate drinking. Our kind of guy here.

ST: Yeah. Okay. Wait, this is in LA? We were just in LA. Why didn't we visit?

TM: I know. I know. If only I had known. So Kris Yenbamroong's signature variant for this dish — the protein — pastrami.

ST: I can see that. You know, there's a spot here in Brooklyn that's not Thai, it's Japanese, but it's called Shalom Japan. And it's a Japanese/Jewish restaurant. And they substitute pastrami in a lot of dishes, and I think that it's pretty brilliant and spot on. Like this cured, somewhat salty, very unctuous, tender meat going into these kind of stir-fry style dishes. Really cool. I think that sounds really cool.

TM: That, I was just like, "Yeah, that's a differentiator." And you can watch it — there's a video of him making this on Food & Wine, with the pastrami. And it looks delectable.

ST: Well, I'm gonna be smoking a brisket soon. Maybe I'll put some brisket in mine.

TM: I'm honestly thinking as well — last time I was in the grocery store, did they have bird's-eye chiles? Because I'm feeling a Pad Kee Mao coming on. Any final non-negotiable for you?

ST: I don't think it's a non-negotiable, but I like to hit my sauce base with a pretty strong amount of white pepper.

TM: Nice.

ST: And then — totally negotiable, but let's maybe get some sriracha in there too.

TM: Yes. And your guy as well, Jet, does a great job of explaining the differences in his video — we're all used to the green-capped sriracha that's made here in the U.S. And he does urge folks to go out and find traditional Thai ones or whatnot, just to give them a go. They will be different.

ST: Yeah, the Thai one is a little bit thinner and a little bit more sort of tangy in profile. But either way, sriracha, I think, has a bad rap for being spicy. It only clocks in at around 2,200 Scoville —

TM: And it's really not too —

ST: — which is, like, not hot at all, in my opinion. I mean, I know I'm a chili head, so I have to try and take a little bit of myself out of the equation, but I can eat it like pudding. I can just eat it with a spoon. It's mostly a salt conveyance.

TM: Salt and tang for me. I'm really not turning to that for heat. But speaking of heat — I will just say, look, I don't think saying this has to be made in a wok is a non-negotiable at home. If I'm getting it in a restaurant, I would very much like that to be the case. But high heat — extremely high heat, quick cooking — I think that is a non-negotiable here, right?

ST: Yeah, we talked about polymerization on another one of our bonus episodes. If you've got a carbon steel pan at home, that'll be your thing too, right? Because woks are carbon steel. They're just deeply bowled. So that carbon steel will get really hot for you really quickly. Also, if you're making this in its traditional way, and you're a little bit tipsy, get your window open, get a fan going on your hood. Because you're gonna smoke up the apartment. You don't want the alarm going off at 2 in the morning — waking up the neighbors. Although the smell would be nice.

TM: It would be very nice. I don't have anything else. I have a little bit of science for us here today, and it's related to this. So how about we get that out of the way here, just before we round out the section?

ST: Yeah, let's go.

TM: Because you kept mentioning, or we mentioned it, wok hei.

ST: Wok hei, I think, is the pronunciation. Sorry. I could be wrong.

TM: No, I think you're right. Wok hei, H-E-I. The breath of the wok. So this is the thing that — this is why you turn to the wok and the extreme heats that you cook those woks on. At those temperatures — at temperatures of, like, 600 degrees Fahrenheit, like sustained temperature of that — the cooking oil aerosolizes. Sorry, having to say that word to myself. And so therefore, droplets from that oil will kiss the flames.

ST: Oh, right. Yeah.

TM: And coat those outer edges or those upper edges of the inside of the wok. Getting that charred — those charred flavors and color and things like that as well, right? Because those woks, again — it's an open flame and these rapid burners. Little bit of context here. So the commercial Chinese wok burner — hits levels of 100,000 to 150,000 BTU.

ST: British thermal units. Let's go.

TM: Do you know what a standard residential gas stove hits?

ST: Probably like 5,000.

TM: Exactly. Seven to twelve.

ST: Yeah. So we had a wok burner at a place that I worked, and it has multiple rings. So you've got — I think there were five, let's say four. I think there were four dials on the front of this thing, because there were four different rings of flame, the burning rings of fire. And as you engaged this thing, you kicked on the small one in the middle, and then you kicked on the one around that, and the one around that, and the one around that. And it sounds like a jet engine. Just this whirring, loud sound of, like, forceful fire. And as I said, the wok — if you sat the wok on this flame for three minutes, it would begin —

TM: God.

ST: — to glow red.

TM: That's dangerous.

ST: Very dangerous. Very dangerous. But super fast and a unique method for cooking, and a unique flavor profile that is achieved from it.

TM: And you know what that reminds me now as well? We were talking about the thing that you would have in your other hand. That implement that's like a mini shovel. That is also not just being used to stir things. You're chopping things as you're cooking as well. So you're breaking down your protein — or you're breaking down the vegetables that are in there, so it incorporates with — especially if you're doing fried rice and stuff like that. So that's what that implement — but yeah, even —

ST: And it looks like a shovel, but it's kinda curved so that it matches the —

TM: Matches the profile of the wok. But yeah, so those numbers, for perspective: 100 to 150,000 BTU versus 7 to 12,000 home cooks', home appliances. And look, most people in New York these days aren't even getting that. We're moving away from gas.

ST: I have electric at home, and I hate it.

TM: Ugh, I'm still holding out over here. But even commercial kitchens in New York, you're topping out at 30,000. So we're talking anywhere between three to five times hotter than what you can achieve in a French kitchen, which just kinda blows my mind. And it's a whole different discipline.

ST: Yeah, because it's also forced harder. You can picture having your stock burner — a low-set burner that's lower than your range top, that's wide for big giant stockpots. Even when I crank that thing up, I don't hear that rushing sound. It's still just giving me a flame, like a normal one. I don't hear that rush of jet engine.

TM: No.

ST: Hi, Chispa.

TM: You do hear a dog joining us in the studio here today. Hi, Chispa. Chispa's second appearance on Sauced. And Chispa, you'll be happy to learn that last time around, that is our most-viewed YouTube episode of all time. So those who headed over to find her — you know what she does very well, though, this dog, beyond giving cuddles, is she does come in an opportune moment for a break. And that is the end of our non-negotiable section here today. We're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna say goodbye to this little dog, just for now. That sounded kind of sinister. And then we're gonna be back with ingredients and preparation.

ST: Let's go.

TM: All right. We're back. Dog-free for now. Sother.

ST: Yeah, buddy.

TM: I know you have a laundry list of ingredients that you wanna consider. I'm going to say the average home cook, including myself, is gonna limit themselves probably beyond what we've discussed in the non-negotiables to three vegetables. What would you choose?

ST: I'm definitely gonna do tomato, probably cherry tomatoes.

TM: Ooh, really?

ST: Yeah. Just because they're the right size and I wanna get 'em blistered. I don't want chunks of tomato. I want just some cherries that I would probably just split in half. I would maybe go with, like, a green, but a firm green — like, maybe bok choy seems like an obvious answer, but maybe broccoli rabe or —

TM: Chinese broccoli I have down here —

ST: Yeah, Chinese broccoli.

TM: — is one of the ones that I really like.

ST: And then if I had three — I don't know if I even need three. Well, like I said earlier, I like green beans.

TM: Yeah, green beans. The other one I was thinking, potentially, those mini corns. Get those in stir-fries a lot.

ST: Yeah, the ones that Tom Hanks ate in Big.

TM: I hope the audio picked that up, that little — but yeah, I'm like, I don't really see any other scenario in which I use those, so I'm just like, yeah, sure.

ST: Yeah, why not?

TM: Smash it in.

ST: But also — and again, we've talked at length about how noodles are weirdly not a non-negotiable, but we're having them in ours. It's definitely a non-negotiable for us. But we've talked on other occasions as well about how too many ingredients can spoil the stew, right? Think of pizza. It boggles my mind that the big national chains have the meat lovers pizza that's got seven kinds of meat and four different bell peppers and mushrooms — it's so heavy and laden, and it's no longer good. It's no longer really pizza, right? Pizza tops out at three ingredients, beyond the cheese — so four ingredients total. I think this dish wins on having all the sauce components that we need, and then just a few things.

TM: Well, that touches upon a gripe, frankly, that I have with sandwiches in New York. More does not mean better when it comes to filling. I see people making these things with piles and piles of different types of meats. You can't eat it. It's unbalanced. That was very much the way that Argentines treat pizza — they see cheese as a commodity, and it's not very good cheese either that they're using, but they're just like, the more cheese the better. That's not how it works for me.

ST: Yeah, no. I have a whole list of other problems with sandwiches in general, but yes, in New York, it seems like they pile them too thick. And the problem really is — okay, if you're gonna put all that on there, then fold it all. If you're just putting layers of flat meat on there, then I'm trying to bite through a brick of meat. The folds give it some toothsomeness and some give. Yeah, that's always bothered me.

TM: I think it's a Boar's Head conspiracy.

ST: Yeah, they're just trying to up the consumption. Depletions. They're in the depletions business.

TM: They're in the depletions business.

ST: Which everybody is, I guess, to some degree. All right, well, let's build this thing.

TM: Let's commit to a preparation.

ST: Yeah. I'm gonna scroll back to my ingredients, which there's a lot of information on them, but there's not that many ingredients.

TM: No, I'm with you on that as well.

ST: So I think first things first — you gotta deal with the noodles. We talked a little bit about that. If you get the fresh ones, unravel them. You mentioned pitching them in the microwave for ten seconds to help dry them off a little bit. But if you get them unraveled and at least sitting on a plate nearby, they'll kinda air-dry while you're doing the rest of this stuff. And we don't need to get them dry-dry. I'm not saying go at them with a paper towel or anything. But we don't want a ton of moisture on there. And that's if you get the fresh ones. If you get the dried ones, then you gotta soak 'em in water and then pull 'em out of that water and do what I just said to them. Now, we're gonna get our mise en place all together — that's the first real step here. You want your neutral oil. I'm probably reaching for peanut oil. Because it seems appropriate to this cuisine. We're talking per serving, a healthy amount of garlic cloves, six to eight of them. Similar amount of Thai chiles or similar — and bear in mind, Thai chiles are pretty small, so when I say six to eight of those, that's probably, for every three of those, that's one serrano, let's call it. Or, if you wanna go even milder, you could probably just do one good-sized jalapeño would be the same volume.

TM: Also, we didn't mention this when we got into it, but worthwhile pointing out — if you're worried about the heat, the green ones are gonna be less ripe than the red ones, and therefore they're gonna have less heat. So if you're concerned about that.

ST: Yeah, I like to go green ones sliced and into what I'm about to describe, and then I reserve a couple of red ones that I just sort of flatten, and then those go in at the end with the basil. But we'll get to that.

TM: And don't worry about quantities, because you know what? Those folks can find them there —

ST: On the recipe cards.

TM: — in the recipe card.

ST: I'm gonna take that garlic and the chiles, and I'm not gonna mess up my mortar and pestle for this, because I don't wanna make it into a paste. But I'm gonna do that technique we talked about in yet another bonus episode about garlic. I'm gonna get it chopped, and then I'm gonna use the side of the blade to sort of flatten it and make — not entirely a paste out of it, but really crush it and get all the aromatics coming out of it. I'm gonna do that to the peppers as well, right? Because this will unlock all of the capsaicin in the pepper and all of the — you said it on the show, I can't remember — alliinase?

TM: Amylase.

ST: Amylase. Mm-hmm. Oh, wow, I remembered. From the garlic. And then we're gonna get that set aside. Because that amylase actually stands forward a little bit more if it sits for a bit. So let's put that aside. We did agree that we're gonna put an onion of some kind, so I would say just a regular Spanish onion. I'm gonna slice it Lyonnaise — which is, the long, thin — it's almost effectively a julienne. But not across, where they look like little semi half-circles, but the lengthways with your knife kind of always pointing towards the center as you rotate around it. Then whatever we decided on — and we just decided on green beans, Chinese broccoli, and cherry tomato — get all those guys together and prepped, which is to say cut the green beans into manageable bites, maybe cut them into thirds. Get your cherry tomatoes just split in half, and then the broccoli needs to be —

TM: I wonder whether cherry tomatoes, just for myself, is a step too far for this cuisine. I just find it so untraditional for Southeast Asian — that I would more stick to vegetables that you would wanna cook. But I mean, this is our recipe. We get to make these decisions. This is our Drunken Noodles.

ST: Well, help me out. So we got now two greens with the broccoli and the green beans. What would you swap the tomato for? And I'm willing to swap. What do you wanna go for, a red bell pepper? Not just because of color, but for a different flavor profile.

TM: And also for the pyrazines, which is the whole point of what you're looking for with that wok hei.

ST: Pyrazines.

TM: Pyrazines. So you know — green bell pepper or Cabernet Franc. That very distinct — yeah, that's your pyrazines.

ST: All right. I love it. That's a —

TM: And I think that's gonna marry really well as well with the holy basil.

ST: That right there is some chef's-audible play.

TM: We called an audible.

ST: We called an audible.

TM: And I didn't know whether that one was gonna end up in blows. I didn't know how committed to the tomatoes you were, but —

ST: We've yet to end up in blows, though I think it will happen one day.

TM: It certainly will.

ST: Okay, so now you're gonna cut your pepper now into — your bell pepper, red bell pepper, into that same julienne, so that we're kinda looking for everything to be somewhat similar in size, so that we have a similar cook speed and time. You're gonna get your specifically holy basil plucked and in a nice pile. And when I say a nice pile, I like a lot.

TM: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ST: We'll give you specs in the recipe, but I like a lot. Almost like it's another vegetable. So that's all plucked and ready to go. Then you're gonna assemble your sauce, which is just in a little bowl. You're gonna whisk together or stir together — you don't have to whisk it. Fish sauce — and again, we talked about nam pla. Your both light and sweet soy —

TM: Oyster.

ST: — oyster sauce.

TM: Palm sugar.

ST: And a bit of palm sugar. And then I said some white pepper.

TM: Perfect.

ST: I love white pepper in this cuisine.

TM: Delicious.

ST: You know —

TM: Ooh.

ST: Uh-oh.

TM: There's another — if you can find them — the fresh green peppercorns that you get on the stalk.

ST: Oh, yeah. Those are gorgeous.

TM: Those would be fantastic in this.

ST: Yeah, you're right. Let's not — we derailed already, so let's stay with this. White pepper. But you know what — this is a complete side tangent, but it's quick. It shocked me endlessly to learn that the Chinese mustard that you get in the packet that comes with your egg roll — do you know what that is? That's yellow mustard and an ungodly amount of white pepper. That's all it is. It's two ingredients.

TM: I've never had it, to be honest with you.

ST: Yeah, you didn't grow up here. I love that mustard. And once I found that out, I was like, "Ah, the white pepper comes into play in a lot of the cuisine." So white pepper. So you're gonna whisk all that together to make your sauce. Now, you're gonna have all of that in little bowls of their own, except for the veg can all be in one together. And then it's time to really, really choreograph this situation — which, now that we know that the dish is more about the drinker, the cook being drunk, than putting booze in the dish, makes it just all the more hilarious to me to picture people making this dish at home while they're tipsy. Getting your pan on the flame and getting it nice and hot till you're starting to see little wisps of smoke. In goes that neutral oil, immediately followed by this — paste is too strong a word — of the garlic and chili, till we get some aroma flying around. And you're moving the pan now. Everything's in motion forever from now on. Then you're gonna reach for your onion next. By the way, that first round with just the chiles and garlic — that's 30 to 45 seconds. Oh, wait, sorry — we finally agreed on a protein, so we've also got a bowl full of chicken thighs that are cut into bite-sized pieces.

TM: I would also have those marinating —

ST: In a little bit of the sauce.

TM: In a little bit of the sauce and —

ST: Pull just a touch of the sauce out and toss it over your protein, whatever the protein.

TM: And I give it a bit of cornstarch given the cuisine that we're in.

ST: Oh, look at you, hedging bets. All right, I'm in.

TM: But yes, very much. Cut quite small as well. Marinating.

ST: Okay. So again, hot oil, in goes your garlic and chili mixture. Then in goes your onion situation. Then — and again, that's another 30 seconds maybe — then in goes the protein, whatever that is, and in this case it's chicken thighs that have been slightly marinated in some of the same sauce. Then goes the noodles, almost immediately followed by the veg that we created — the green bean, broccoli, bell pepper situation. And within 15 seconds of that, you're going in with all the sauce all at once. Gonna create a lot of sizzling happening. You're tossing and moving the entire time. You're getting little bits of char on the edges of the pasta itself, little bits of char on the edges of the vegetables. The chicken is cooking through by virtue of, A, being in that hot pan, but also being surrounded by the heat that's generated when the sauce steams and bubbles. And then you're going onto a plate. And we're talking from the wisps of smoke to getting it out of that hot pan and onto a plate — less than three minutes.

TM: Sounds great to me. I would — well, before you plate, we gotta go in with that basil.

ST: Oh, right. Crap. I forgot the basil. Duh. It's one of the last things to go in, though, and that's why I forgot it — because we really just want it to wilt. We're not trying to cook the basil. We're just trying to get it to wilt, and some of the oils will come out of that, and then that'll perfume the thing. Because we wanna keep a lot of the aromatic quality of the basil.

TM: My only other suggestion here would be — the way you did it is the way that I would approach it with a wok, and if I had experience with a wok. I think if I'm aiming for the home analog and I'm using my cast iron, I'm probably gonna sear my protein before I do anything. I'm gonna sear it and pull it out, so that that's a component that can just go in there. And then I don't need to worry too much about getting that color on it and how that's coming out. But I think that really depends on your comfort level, your skill, and your experience. I think the way that you described it is the way that on paper this should be done, especially in the wok scenario. And then so we're serving as is. That is everything I think when it comes to Drunken Noodles and the preparation.

ST: Yeah. Let's take a quick break and come back and talk about what we're drinking.

TM: Let's do it. All right, we're back with what we're drinking. Before we do — this is a show about cooking with booze and drinking with food. We've avoided alcohol up until this point. Theoretically speaking, now that we're talking about alcohol — if you were going to include some booze, because you're like, "Well, it's sauce, we have to" — what would be your number-one choice?

ST: Oh, Tim, you're gonna hate me. I think that there are so many uses for this particular booze that cross into this cuisine, but we've used it so many times you're gonna be mad at me. It's Cognac. I would deglaze the pan with Cognac.

TM: No, we said we're not allowed any more Cognac in cocktails that we make, but it's fair game in the kitchen. So why — what draws you to Cognac? What makes this a good candidate for Cognac for you?

ST: Because this dish really toes the line between sweet and savory, and Cognac is gonna bring some extra sweet to the mix. And it's a common ingredient in a lot of, like, Asian-style cooking. XO sauce is made with XO.

TM: Yeah. There you go. Cool.

ST: But I could also easily see deglazing the pan with a crisp Thai beer. And using that to thin the sauce a little, or steam the veg.

TM: Well, one of the things that neither of us said as well is lime, and I'm sure this could probably take a hit of lime at the end to finish it, just to cut through some of that saltiness and maybe the heat as well. I was thinking, trying to stay true to our sort of Chinese and Thai roots here. My number-one choice would be Shaoxing Chinese rice wine. Gonna get some of that savoriness — and again, that I can imagine, and I think I might have seen a chef doing this as well, just sort of like how I described earlier on the upper inside edges of the wok, just getting the aromatics of that. And again, this is probably gonna be right at the end when you're doing aromatics and herbs and whatnot just before serving. Or — Thailand's national spirit, it's called Mekhong, just like the river. 95% sugarcane, 5% rice and herbs. But very difficult to find over here. I haven't encountered it. So I'm like, look, would I then go for an analog — I don't know, like an agricole or something? I don't know. Maybe. But I'll probably just stick with that Shaoxing wine if I was gonna do that. But we're not. We're talking about booze in the glass. I think we can both agree, just ice-cold frosty beer.

ST: Okay, so there used to be a place here in New York City, and I'm really sad that it's gone. It had a Michelin star. It was called Uncle Boons. And Uncle Boons had — I don't know what this device is called. I've tried to search it, but without knowing its name, it's very difficult to search. So maybe a listener can help me out. Behind the bar, it looked like a small wooden barrel that was sitting on effectively like a turntable, like a record player, but that would rotate it back and forth, almost like a little washing machine — back and forth, back and forth. And in there they had — what's the Thai beer? It just escaped my brain. It's in the green bottle —

TM: Singha?

ST: No. Tsingtao.

TM: Tsingtao —

ST: Tsingtao, right? Yeah.

TM: Tsingtao is the Chinese one.

ST: I think that's the beer they had. It had the elephant on the label, right? Yeah. So they have them in the barrel-looking thing with a bunch of ice and a bunch of rock salt, so the ice is very, very cold. And then they had this mug — a metal mug — that was just barely bigger than the beer bottle, so the beer bottle could sit into the mug. And the reason it was just barely bigger is because they would pull this out of the ice. They'd pull your beer out of there, turn it upside down, tap the bottom of it with their church key, flip it back over, and crack it open and sit it in that mug really quickly. And this would cause a catalyst inside that would start to freeze the beer. And it would freeze and start to slowly erupt from the top and fall over the edge of the bottle and down into the mug. And then they would jam a straw in it and hand it to you. Basically a beer slushie. As cold as you can get a beer, served with delicious spicy Thai food. The very first time I went and got it, I recall I said, "Oh, this is delicious. I'm gonna have one of these, and then I'm gonna probably get a cocktail with my dinner." And I think I had six of those beers — because I couldn't stop drinking them. They go down so easy. They're so cold and so fast. And then every time I went after that, I just would drink those beers.

TM: So your ideal pairing that you're recommending for the show is something you don't know the name of and no one can find?

ST: Well, I'm just saying — this is just a device that they had. Get this beer, get any beer. You've seen this happen when your fridge is accidentally too cold and your beer catalyzes and freezes, right? It happens to me all the time with seltzer water in my fridge. It gets a little too cold, and then as soon as you crack it open, it starts to freeze.

TM: Yeah, from the bottom up. You can watch it. It's pretty fascinating.

ST: But this little rig — I don't know what this thing was called. And I don't know how much the shaking motion has to do with it, or if that's just something to make you look at the thing. Because the barrel was also, like, very ornately carved wood. It was gorgeous. It was an eye-catching piece. I don't know if you need that. You just need that right temperature. So what I'm really recommending is as cold a beer as you can get. And you've heard me say it a thousand times — I love beer on ice. Pour a beer over ice.

TM: Yeah. I would go past the ice, and I would just be like, keep a rotation of mugs with a handle in your freezer, and just — every time you're serving a fresh beer, pull one of those out of the freezer. I think we're good to go. That is gonna be — especially if we're hitting those six to eight Thai chiles.

ST: Plus all that garlic.

TM: Tell me about your cocktail.

ST: Well, do you not have a wine recommendation? I figured you would.

TM: I do if you don't.

ST: No, I went cocktail this week.

TM: Oh, you're doing a cocktail too.

ST: I think with this style of food, like an off-dry Riesling, maybe a Gewürztraminer. That's my only two, really.

TM: Well, I'll hit you with my cocktail then for now.

ST: Yeah, hit me with yours, and then I'll come back with mine.

TM: So I'm calling this The Krapow, which I believe — or grapow — is the technical name or the local name for holy basil. And I'm gonna make a kind of gin caipirinha mojito-adjacent thing.

ST: I'm in.

TM: So we're going an ounce and a half of London Dry gin, three-quarters ounce of fresh lime juice, half an ounce of palm sugar syrup — now that I know how to make that. Four to six holy basil leaves, and some spent lime shells — or more like wedges. I'm gonna work that all together in a tin. Then I'm gonna add ice, shake it up, get it super-chilled, strain it into a highball glass, some ice, top it with a little bit of sparkling water — because both of us love a sparkling drink. So it's kinda like a lengthened gin-and-basil caipirinha weird hybrid.

ST: I love it. If I were to change anything, I would change one thing.

TM: Hit me.

ST: Let's lengthen it with that frosty cold beer.

TM: Oh, yes. Now you're thinking like a pro.

ST: Listen, we didn't get enough booze in the food. We gotta get more booze in the glass. Lengthen it with that frosty cold beer. I mean, it sounds delightful with the seltzer, but let's go with — you know what?

TM: Or maybe even like a sparkling sake.

ST: Or a ginger beer.

TM: Or a ginger beer, yeah.

ST: And, like, ginger beer — the ones that are alcoholic. Not ginger ale, which has always confused me.

TM: No, that's not the difference. Ginger beer is non-alcoholic.

ST: But there are ones that are.

TM: There are.

ST: That's the confusing part. One's called ale, it's not ale. One's called beer, it's not beer. But there are some that are called beer that are beer.

TM: And I forget — it's a difference in the way that they're made. But given the fact that I'm saying I forget, let's just move on. It's never stuck. So what do you have for us?

ST: Well, you brought up Mekhong, which it is hard to get, but it's not impossible. And I thought maybe we could make sort of a sour using that. So not very far off of your drink. Mekhong, as you mentioned before, is 95% molasses, 5% rice ferment to make the distillate, which gives it, like — as you also said, like agricole sugarcane. Hits of ginger and vanilla and citrus are all in the Mekhong whisky. It's called Mekhong whisky even though it's not whisky at all. And they have a drink already called the Thai Sabai — S-A-B-A-I — which means Thai welcome drink. So it's the welcome drink with the Mekhong, lime juice, simple syrup, and Thai basil. I was thinking, though, instead of shaking it like a sour — I would put all of this stuff together and blend it, and then serve it over pebble ice. So again, it's frosty cold. The Mekhong is sort of an amber-ish color, not really as dark as whisky — like a really light rum color. So this resulting thing would probably be — again, you know me — but it'd probably be kind of greenish. So over pebble ice, I think it would look pretty attractive. And then maybe just a nice — as you said, the dish is kinda missing — maybe just a big chunk of lime sitting on top, so that I could add a little lime as I wanted to or use that to squeeze on my food.

TM: Maybe slap some — maybe even go the Thai basil. A little green garnish of some variety, like a nice fresh herb to just bury your nose into as you're —

ST: I love it.

TM: — sipping from that straw and that pebble ice. Sounds fantastic. The first ever Sauced dish we've covered where we're actively both avoiding booze, at least in the dish.

ST: In the dish, yeah. But I think that's all right. We live and we learn, and we continue to grow.

TM: Any other final thoughts from you here?

ST: Yeah. I think that this dish is an exercise in preparedness. I think all dishes require mise en place, but this dish and this style of cooking in general are real exemplars of that necessity. But if you have everything prepared, then — and don't forget, you can do all that preparation in advance, and then go out and get drunk and come home, and all your mise en place is ready. You don't have to do that mise in that state of mind. If you get everything ready, knowing that later when you come home you're gonna want them Drunken Noodles, then let's go.

TM: Oh, that makes it even more fun. I can actually see myself doing that.

ST: I think we're gonna do it. When our respective partners are out of town, you and I are gonna get ripped up and make some Drunken Noodles.

TM: And we're gonna find that beer contraption. You know, I was thinking about this, and for me, I was like — just as the dish is called Drunken Noodles but there's no booze, and noodles weren't in the original version of this dish — I don't think Drunken Noodles is a recipe so much as a list of potential and some non-negotiable ingredients. But also a state of physical being. And Anthony Bourdain summed it up in a much better way in that episode, so I will just share that here. He said: "That perfect balance of pain and pleasure and more pain. Brain flooding with endorphins and all is well with the world, until tomorrow morning." I mean — and this is as he was eating it —

ST: While drinking. Oh yeah, while drinking and knowing that he was setting himself up for success tomorrow.

TM: But I just thought that idea of pain and pleasure and more pain — it makes me think of whenever you talk about being a chili head. So I thought you might enjoy that one.

ST: I do. And he's right. That is exactly what being, you know, a spice hunter, chili head — whatever phrase you wanna add — that's exactly what it is. It's that I want it to hurt, you know? When I'm having food with —

TM: Don't go too far here.

ST: When I'm having food with —

TM: Don't go too far.

ST: What do you mean? When I'm having food with Natalie, she'll look over at me and she'll go, "Are you okay?" And I go, "Oh yeah, this hurts. This hurts." And she goes, "Why do you wanna hurt yourself?" And I go, "I just love it."

TM: I just worried, you know — I was like, we've made it this far into this episode. We've almost got out cleanly. I don't need you to be bringing up kitchen appliances that you use to store things that people stockpiled in the pandemic unnecessarily. Okay. You know where I'm going with that one or no? Okay, good. I'll tell you off air. In the meantime — time to put on the apron.

ST: Break out the shaker. And let's —

TM: — get cooking.

ST: And drinking.

TM: Cheers.

ST: Cheers, buddy.