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, 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 cilantro and green onions and put aside
Scramble 6 eggs in a pan on medium heat with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil. Once done, set aside.
Add another 1 tablespoon coconut oil to the pan and add your bag of shrimp making sure to shell/de-vine them.
Boil water and add 1 teaspoon salt. Once water is boiling add the rice noodles, stirring often until cooked through. Remove and strain.
Put the noodles back in the pot.
Pour 1 cup of the pad thai sauce into cooked noodles and stir until sauce is mixed in and distributed evenly.
Serve on a plate and then add garnish of 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.