Chef Jeong-sun
Nakji-jeot (Salted Octopus)
Small octopus cleaned hard with coarse salt, cold-cured until firm, then seasoned with gochugaru, garlic, ginger, and sesame so each chewy piece still tastes of the sea.
Recipe Archive
Sauces & Condiments
Sauces and condiments carry a surprising amount of technique. Find dressings, marinades, stocks, gravies, relishes, and finishing sauces with clear purpose.
965 recipes
Culinary Explorer
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Recipes
Chef Fai
Southern Fermented Fish Sauce (Nam Budu)
The deep south runs on budu, not nam pla. Fermented anchovy sauce cooked down with palm sugar, lime, shallots, and chili into a thick, funky dip that is the salt pillar of Southern Thai cooking.
Chef Fai
Sweet Fish Sauce Dip (Nam Pla Wan)
Fish sauce and palm sugar reduced to a glossy, salty-sweet syrup with raw shallots, sliced chilies, and a squeeze of lime. The four pillars in a jar. Served with unripe fruit that fights back.
Chef Fai
Liver Chili Dip (Nam Prik Dab)
Grilled chicken liver pounded in the krok with charcoal-roasted chilies, garlic, and shallots. The kreung tam foundation taken to its richest, darkest, most Northern expression. Khantoke food, not restaurant food.
Chef Fai
Green Curry Paste (Nam Prik Gaeng Khiew Wan)
This is the kreung tam itself. Nine essential ingredients, pounded in order from hardest to most delicate, building the foundation that every Thai curry stands on. Principles, not recipes.
Chef Fai
Red Curry Paste (Nam Prik Gaeng Phet)
Same nine ingredients as green curry, but dried red chilies replace fresh green. Deeper heat, longer shelf life, wider application. This is the workhorse kreung tam of Central Thai cooking, and it starts in the krok.
Chef Fai
Dry Glass Chili Paste (Nam Prik Haew)
The kreung tam stripped to its driest bones: roasted chilies and garlic pounded until they shatter like glass. Lanna farmers carried this to the rice fields because the mortar can preserve as well as it transforms.
Chef Fai
Shrimp Paste Chili Relish (Nam Prik Kapi)
The four pillars reduced to their rawest form: roasted kapi pounded with dried chilies, garlic, lime, and palm sugar in the granite mortar. Every bite is the Thai flavor system in miniature, eaten with sticky rice on the Lanna khantoke.
Chef Fai
Galangal Chili Dip (Nam Prik Kha)
Five ingredients. Charcoal. A mortar. The kreung tam stripped to its bones: fire transforms, the krok unifies, and galangal steps from background note to the center of the plate.
Chef Fai
Water Bug Chili Relish (Nam Prik Maeng Da)
A Northern Thai nam prik built on the strangest, most captivating aroma in all of Thai cuisine: the floral essence of the giant water bug, pounded into a chili relish that stops conversation and starts obsession.
Chef Fai
Prickly Ash Pepper Relish (Nam Prik Makhwaen)
Makhwaen delivers a numbing citrus electricity no other Thai ingredient replicates. Roast it, pound it with charred chilies and garlic, season with nam pla. Pure Lanna, pure mortar, pure principle.
Chef Fai
Roasted Green Chili Dip (Nam Prik Num)
Fire transforms what the mortar finishes. Roast the prik num over charcoal until the skins blister, pound them in the krok with garlic and shallots, season with nam pla. Northern Thai food at its most elemental.
Chef Fai
Roasted Chili Jam (Nam Prik Pao)
Not a curry paste but a charred condiment paste: every ingredient fried to a different shade of dark, then pounded and cooked down with tamarind, fish sauce, and palm sugar. The four pillars in a jar.
Chef Fai
Mackerel Chili Dip (Nam Prik Pla Too)
Roasted pla too torn apart and pounded into a kreung tam of charred chilies, garlic, and shallots. Fish sauce for salt, lime for sour, palm sugar for sweet, prik haeng for heat. Every Thai mother's answer to the question: what's for dinner?
Chef Fai
Red Eye Chili Dip (Nam Prik Ta Daeng)
Sun-dried red chilies roasted black over charcoal, pounded with garlic, shallots, and fish sauce until your eyes water and your nose runs. That's the name. That's the point. Lanna fire from the krok.
Chef Fai
Fermented Soybean Dip (Nam Prik Tua Nao)
The Lanna ferment that replaces kapi entirely. Tua nao discs crumbled and pounded with chilies, garlic, and shallots in the krok. This is how the North defines its identity in one dip, no shrimp paste needed.
Chef Lupita
Nanchi Curtido Chiapaneco
Chiapas' nanchi curtido from the Comitán table: ripe golden nanche cured with cane aguardiente, sugar, and canela until the fruit turns sweet-sour, fragrant, and lightly boozy.
Chef Lupita
Nayarit Zarandeado Marinade (Adobo Zarandeado)
Nayarit's Pacific coast adobo, built from toasted guajillo, garlic, mustard, lime, and soy, made to cling to butterflied fish before it meets wood fire.
Chef Jeong-sun
Neulgeun-hobak-kimchi (Aged Pumpkin Kimchi)
A country kimchi of aged pumpkin, cabbage, and radish, salted carefully and ripened until the pumpkin softens into sweetness, then saved for the winter stew pot.
Chef Remy
New Orleans BBQ Butter Sauce
A rich, peppery butter bath loaded with garlic, Worcestershire, and fresh rosemary, the kind of sauce that turns Gulf shrimp into a religious experience and makes crusty French bread disappear.
Chef Takumi
Niban Dashi (二番だし, second dashi)
Niban dashi is thrift with standards: the second pull from konbu and bonito, less perfumed than the first stock, but round enough for simmered dishes.
Chef Takumi
Niboshi Dashi (煮干しだし, dried sardine stock)
This is the everyday dashi with a little backbone: niboshi soaked cold, warmed gently, and strained before bitterness takes hold. It makes miso soup taste like home food, not performance.
Chef Takumi
Nikkō Tamari Pickles (たまり漬け, Tamarizuke)
Dark tamari does the quiet work here: salted roots, cooled soy, and time. Dry the vegetables well before they meet the jar, and the pickle turns savory, firm, and deeply colored.
Chef Lupita
Nogada de Santa Monica
Puebla's convent walnut sauce, pale and rich from fresh nuez de Castilla, goat cheese, milk, sherry, and canela, made in August when the walnuts still peel clean.
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