I love peanut pad thai, and have been making it frequently with ingredients I had around the house, but I ran out of noodles, and we had a head of cabbage in the fridge that we trying to use up. I was eating it over rice with soy sauce and PB2, and I realized I was nearly making pad thai anyway. I wrote about PB2 in my last post, but to give a quick introduction: PB2 is powdered peanut butter with the oil taken out. A friend requested that I post the pad thai recipe, so here it is!
Cabbage has been shown to lower cholesterol, provide you with plenty of fiber (18% of daily requirement in this recipe), and tons of vitamin k, but if you want to get all gluten-y about it (joke, who doesn’t love noodles?), you can use noodles instead of cabbage. I found this actually really filling but also light, and I wasn’t bummed out at all that I was eating cabbage instead of noodles. Because soy sauce has gluten in it, this dish isn’t completely gluten free anyway, but you can find gluten-free soy sauce at most stores now.
I used tempeh here, but I usually use tofu. I think I like tofu better with it because it absorbs more of the flavor. I also used an egg (or actually soy milk and an egg yolk I didn’t want to waste from a recipe that called for egg whites), but to make it vegan, just use more tofu or tempeh and skip the egg. I don’t think it really needs the egg, and I usually skip it, but the more protein the better.
This would be at least $4.50 (assuming this is around half of a giant plate of pad thai) from a take-out restaurant, and it would have a whole lot more grease. The version I made costs $3.67 (at the most), and has much, much less fat (no deep fryer involved) and calories. It only took me about 30 minutes to make, and it is made from things I usually have in my kitchen. You can add whatever other veggies you have lying around. I would usually have put some bean sprouts in this, and a handful peanuts would have been a nice addition.
Servings: 1
You will need
- Pan
- Steamer basket (or metal colander or strainer, and if nothing else just a pot of water)
- Cutting board + knife
Ingredients
This is really all mostly to taste, but here are some rough guidelines
- 1/2 t Sriracha sauce (I used more like a 1.5 t, but if you’re not good with spice start with 1/2 and add more if you want)
- Juice of 1/4 lime
- 1/8th head of cabbage, which is about 1 cup shredded
- 2 T soy sauce
- 1/3 c unsweetened almond/soy/rice milk
- 1 t brown sugar
- 1/2 t rice vinegar
- Handful of chopped cilantro
- Handful of chopped green onion
- 2 T peanut butter or PB2 powdered peanut butter
- Dash of ground ginger
- Dash of cayenne
- Dash of black pepper
- 1 t sesame oil
- 1/3 cup cubed tofu, tempeh or meat of choice
- 1 egg (optional)
- Handful of chopped peanuts (would have been a nice addition)
- Bean sprouts (would also have been nice)
To Make
- Chop tofu/tempeh into bite-size pieces and lightly fry in sesame oil on all sides
- While the tofu is browning, shred cabbage to a fettuccine noodle size and steam it for 15-20 while you’re making the rest of the meal
- Add the egg in the tofu pan and scramble it
- Add in the spices, peanut butter, soy sauce, Sriracha, vinegar, sugar, and milk and let the sauce simmer a bit while you…
- Chop the cilantro and the greens
- Toss the cabbage into the tofu pan and add the lime
- Garnish with cilantro and greens and more hot sauce
