Things to eat: Rice & Beans- Thai Style

Categorized | Living in Bangkok, Thai Food

Tags | bangkok food, cheap eats, cheap thai food, eating at home in bangkok, kikkoman, kikkoman soy sauce, rice and beans, rice and beans in thailand, rice cooker, siracha, thai green beans, thai street beans, thai street food

Things to eat: Rice & Beans- Thai Style

Posted on 15 July 2009 by Mike Behnken

Eating in vs. Eating out

With little cheap and delicious hole in the wall and street food spots every 20 meters or so on the street there really is no need to prepare any food at home. Compound that that with the fact that messy food preparation has the possibility to turn your apartment into a roach motel and I’d be willing to bet that most expats (and maybe even Thai people) have a majority of their meals away from home.

So far I’ve bought 7/11 prepared meals which are cheap (35-45 baht {$1.02-1.32}) and include bland spaghetti & tomato sauce, salty fried rice and decent meats with rice to microwave at home but I decided it is the time to ‘prepare’ something. I say ‘prepare’ because if it doesn’t include a rice cooker, microwave or coffee maker it’s not possible.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy

I have been wondering for the past few weeks how healthy the foods I’ve been eating actually are. The old idea that, “if it tastes good, it’s unhealthy” may be true as most Thai food which you can buy for around $1.00USD are delicious. The added fat has got to be an issue as you can often see the guy at the wok liberally dumping in oil. I decided to try to avoid things with high fat such as any fried rice, chicken skin and fatty pork.

Green Beans

I have no idea where I can find green vegetables close to where I live so I see these green beans when I’m walking back from the gym in some noodle stands. For a very low 10 baht (35 cents) I got this bag of green beans (in picture below). I noticed Thai people staring at me while I was walking down the street with the bag of beans which was pretty interesting.

To make a long story short, I have a rice cooker with a steamer on top. I just broke the beans up, threw them in while the rice was steaming and 10 or so minutes later I have a nice plate of rice & green vegetables. I threw a little Kikkoman soy sauce on them along with a few squirts of Siracha and Bam!

I had a fat free servings of carbs and fiber along with the complimentary protein at home in 10 minutes. The best part is the price which I estimate to be around 40 cents! I took some Flax seed pills to add the essential fats and I sometimes take a little whey protein with it for added protein.