Thai food is the national dish of Thailand. Thai cooking combines several traditional elements of Southeast Asia, emphasizing light dishes and rich aromatic ingredients. The spicy taste of Thai food is well known. Like other Asian cuisines, balance, detail and diversity are of paramount importance to Thai chefs. Thai food is famous for the balance of three or four basic tastes in each dish or meal: sour, sweet, salty and bitter.

As david thompson, a recognized expert on Thai food, explained in an interview, "Thai food is not simple. It is about juggling different elements to create a harmonious ending. Just like a complex musical chord, it must have a smooth surface, but what happens on the surface is not important. Simplicity is not the motto here at all. Some Westerners think that this is a mixture of tastes, but for Thais, what matters is the complexity they like. "

Thai cuisine is more accurately described as four local cuisines corresponding to the four major regions of the country: North, Northeast (or Isan), Central and South, and each cuisine shares similar food or food from neighboring countries and regions: Myanmar in the northwest, Yunnan Province and Laos in China in the north, Vietnam and Cambodia in the east and Malaysia in the south. 【 Need to quote 】 In addition to these four local cuisines, there are Thai royal cuisines, whose history can be traced back to the world court cuisines in Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351–65 438+0767ce). Its delicacy, cooking techniques and the use of ingredients have a great influence on the cooking in the central plains of Thailand.

For centuries, Thai cuisine has interacted with the cooking traditions and dishes of Thailand's neighboring countries. Regional differences are often related to neighboring countries (usually with the same cultural background and race on both sides of the border), climate and geography. Curries in southern Thailand tend to contain coconut milk and fresh turmeric, while dishes in the northeast usually contain lime juice. The cuisine in northeastern Thailand (or Ethan) is similar to that in southern Laos, while the cuisine in northern Thailand has many similarities with the cuisine in northern Laos and Shan State in Myanmar. Many popular dishes eaten in Thailand were originally China dishes, which were mainly introduced to Thailand by chaozhou people. They made Thai Chinese the majority. These dishes include chok (rice porridge), kui-tiao rat na (fried rice noodles) and khao kha mu (stewed pork with rice). China people also introduced the use of wok, the technology of frying and stir-frying dishes, noodles, oyster sauce and soybean products. Cuisine such as kaeng kari (yellow curry) and kaeng matsaman (Masaman curry) are adaptations of Thai cuisine, which originated from Indian cuisine and Persian cuisine.