Thai Fish Cakes Recipe – Thai Special
Thai fish cakes are a popular Thai restaurant dish and they’re so easy to make at home. Full of flavour, this classic Thai street food is served with a crunchy, tangy and sweet Thai cucumber sauce.
- Prep Time15 min
- Cook Time15 min
- Total Time30 min
Thai fish cakes Ingredients :
- ? cup rice wine vinegar (80ml)
- ¼ cup white granulated sugar (50g / 1.8oz)
- 2 tablespoons water (40ml, notes 1)
- 2-3 teaspoons finely chopped fresh chilli, to your taste
- ¼ cup finely diced cucumber, seeds removed
- 1 tablespoon finely diced shallots (or red onion) (notes 1)
- ½ teaspoon fish sauce (or soy sauce if you don’t like fish sauce
- HAI FISH CAKES (TOD MUN PLA)
- 250 g firm white fish fillets (like snapper, basa, tilapia) (8.8oz)
- 250 g raw prawn / shrimp meat (or more fish) (8.8oz) (notes 2)
- 2 spring onions (scallions / green onions) finely sliced
- 1 ½ tablespoons green curry paste (notes 1 & 3)
- 3 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 large egg
- 1 lime
- 7 green beans, finely sliced into rounds
- ¼-? cup peanut oil (or canola oil)
- Fresh coriander / cilantro, for garnish
How to Make Thai fish cakes
FOR THE THAI CUCUMBER SAUCE: Heat rice wine vinegar, sugar and water stirring until dissolved. Bring it to a boil for a minute, then set it aside to cool.
Once cool add chilli, cucumber and onion. Stir in fish sauce.
FOR THE FISH CAKES: Peel and devein the prawns, then chop them into a few chunks. Set aside.
Make sure the fish is free from bones, roughly chop and place it in the food processor.
Add the spring onions, green curry paste, fish sauce and egg. to the food processor. Use a microplane to zest the lime and add the zest to the food processor too.
Blend until just a few chunks remain.
Add the chopped prawns and blend again until everything is quite fine with just some small chunks of prawn meat.
Add the green beans and mix with a spatula to combine.
Use wet hands to carefully roll and press 2 tablespoons of mixture into a disk about 5cm (2inch) wide.
Heat half the oil in a non-stick frying pan or skillet over medium high heat. If your pan is not non-stick, you may need to double the oil to prevent them sticking.
Add half the fish cakes and cook for 2 minutes or until you can see the line of cooked mixture about half way up the fish cake. Flip and cook another 2 minutes on the other side.
Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel. Repeat with remaining oil and fish cakes.
Cut the lime into wedges. Serve the fish cakes with the lime wedges (to squeeze over a little lime juice) and the Thai cucumber sauce on the side.
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Recipe Notes:
Tablespoons: I use a standard Australian 20ml tablespoon (equal to 4 teaspoons) – check the volume of yours before measuring.
Prawn meat: Weight shown is for meat only. If buying prawns in their shells you’ll need to buy at least twice as much.
Curry paste: Traditionally, Thai red curry paste is used but I love the freshness of green curry paste. You can use whichever you prefer or have on hand. You can leave it out if you don’t want your fish cakes to be spicy.
The Thai cucumber dip: If you don’t feel like making the sauce, a good store-bought Thai sweet chili sauce will do the trick.
Consistency: You can blend the mixture until completely smooth if you prefer, but I love a few small chunky bits of prawn.
