Roasted Chilli Paste (Nam Prik Pao)

Nam prik pao — roasted chilli paste — appears throughout Thompson's Thai Food as the most versatile of the prepared chilli pastes. It is made in advance, keeps for months in the refrigerator under a layer of oil, and is added in quantities from a teaspoon to a tablespoon depending on the application.

A dark, smoky, deeply flavoured paste of roasted dried chillies, shallots, and garlic — the paste that flavours tom yam nam khon, that enriches pad Thai, and that serves as a standalone condiment with vegetables and grilled fish. Nam prik pao is the Thai kitchen's equivalent of the fond in a French roasting pan: a concentrated, caramelised depth source that transforms whatever it touches.

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Roasted chilli and roasted allium create a paste where the Maillard compounds of caramelised shallot and garlic — the same pyrazines and furanones that develop in caramel — combine with the capsaicinoid-derived smoky compounds of the roasted chilli. As Segnit notes, smoke as a flavour register works because pyrolysis compounds — the same family as Maillard-derived Maillard ones — provide a complexity that no fresh aromatic achieves. The dried shrimp adds glutamate depth that makes all other flavours in the paste more perceptible.