De-shell the tamarind and pull off all the little stringy bits.
Put the shelled tamarind in 2 cups of boiling water and let them soak for around 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes have passed, squish them around with your hands until it starts getting thicker and more paste-like. Optionally at this point you can remove the seeds.
Put the mixture through a fine strainer over a bowl, pushing the paste through to get as much as possible.
Keep 1 cup out for the recipe and freeze the rest for next time. Or alternatively, you can double the recipe for the pad thai sauce (also doubling the amount of tamarind paste from 1 cup to 2 cups) and then freeze the rest afterwards.
Pad thai sauce
Add to the tamarind paste the lime juice, chili garlic sauce, fish sauce, coconut aminos, sunflower butter and garlic powder. Mix sauce thoroughly with a fork or mixer.
Main dish
Chop up the cilantro and green onions and put aside.
Scramble 6 eggs in a large pan on medium heat with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil. Once done, transfer to a small bowl and set aside.
Add another 1 tablespoon coconut oil to the pan and add your bag of thawed shrimp making sure to shell/de-vine them.
Boil a large pot of water and add 1 teaspoon salt. Once the water is boiling add the rice noodles, stirring often until cooked through. If you want your noodles to be al dente, cook them for slightly less time than is indicated on the package. Remove and strain.
Put the noodles back in the pot.
Pour 1 cup of the pad thai sauce into the cooked noodles and stir until the sauce is mixed in and distributed evenly.
Serve your sauced noodles on a plate and then add fresh cilantro, green onions, scrambled eggs, bean sprouts, shrimp and additional lime wedges.
Video
Notes
For this recipe we will be making tamarind paste from whole, dried tamarind. The amount of tamarind paste this recipe calls for is a touch more than what you’d need if you purchased the store-bought stuff because we’re using actual tamarind. Store bought tamarind paste can be very concentrated and strong - so I wanted to make sure to give you a head’s up on this. If using store-bought tamarind paste, you may want to consider putting a little bit less in.