Where's the beef ? not with the noodles these days
'Kui tio nua' and its many variants have long been Thai favourites, but these days you're more likely to see it made with pork
No one would deny kui tio nua, or beef noodles, a prime place as a favourite on the Thai table. This is true even though these days more and more people are avoiding beef. Recognising this trend, restaurants that specialise in the dish have been making some adaptations.
They serve a bowl of noodles that looks like the traditional beef noodles with soup, but the meat is pork that has been simmered until it is extremely tender. The seasonings used are those of the old-fashioned beef version of the dish, however. This dish, called kui tio moo toon, is designed to appeal to those who crave beef noodles but don't actually want to eat beef.
Unlike the pork version of the dish, beef noodles were originally eaten by people who worked very hard but earned little. Pork noodles were sold from boats that were paddled through canals of all sizes and sold in local communities in front of temples, or even to households set on the banks of canals.
People liked this arrangement because the pork noodles were a dish that they ate routinely. It made for an easy meal, and it was tasty. Furthermore, farming families did not like to eat beef. They saw cattle and water buffalo as good and helpful animals that worked with them in the fields and pulled their carts.
Beef noodles, on the other hand, were sold in towns, usually in neighbourhoods where labourers lived, near warehouses and rice mills where workers carried sacks of rice and shifted heavy goods. At first the vendors were exclusively Chinese and the dish was made with beef innards and the tough meat attached to beef tendons. To prepare it, the beef or water buffalo innards were boiled until very tender together with lemon grass, garlic, galangal and salt in a large pot that was portable and could be carried around suspended from a pole balanced on the shoulder.
The meat would cook at the same time that the food was being sold. Customers would order some of the boiled meat and the liquid it was cooked in with a plate of rice and paid little for it. If a worker had a little more money he might ask for some of the meat attached to the tendon, too, showing that on that day he had earned more than usual. Nam pla and pickled chillies in vinegar were set out for customers to use to season their food.
There were beef noodle vendors all over Chinatown doing business next to opium parlours, dye works, warehouses and Chinese shrines. They could also be found near rickshaw stations.
With time, the boiled beef innards became more popular and widely available. It wasn't only the low price that appealed to people; they liked the taste, too. Eventually someone added the fine-gauge rice noodles called sen mee and kui tio nua was born. The dish's popularity continued to grow as the broth evolved into the tasty form the noodles are served with now.
The number of vendors who sold only boiled beef innards decreased and noodle restaurants began to appear along every street in major neighbourhoods. Traditional beef noodles can contain fresh beef, beef liver, beef spleen or beef heart depending on a customer's preference. The broth is thick and rich. Some people prefer it without the noodles and eat it with rice as kao lao.
There is another version of beef noodles in which the broth is light and clear and with meatballs made from minced beef as the main ingredient. Beef that has been stewed until very soft and tender, and fresh boiled beef are also available. The dish is called kui tio luk chin nua nam sai (beef meatball noodles with clear broth). In Bangkok there are not too many restaurants that offer it. The thing that reveals a well-made dish is the quality of the broth.
This dish is made only with sen mee, and some shops serve it with an especially tasty version of chillies pickled in vinegar. The thing that makes it so good is the trick of adding some of the liquid from pickled garlic to the vinegar.
A third kind of beef noodles has thick broth with a sweet taste. Stewed and fresh beef are included, as well as beef liver. Besides the broth, this dish calls for pickled chillies, using ground prik kee nu chillies to make it very hot. Once again, the noodles have to be sen mee, the vegetables added should be bean sprouts and finely chopped cabbage. The first restaurant to make beef noodles this way was on Soi Wat Dong Moon Lek off Itsaraphap Road in Thon Buri. The secret of the dish's success was the broth, made by simmering beef bones for more than 24 hours. The shop was known as Kui Tio Wat Dong Moon Lek and set the example for other beef noodle restaurants such as Rot Det, Rot Dee Det. As for the original restaurant, people from all over Bangkok visit it.
Another variety of beef noodle dish also requires a rich broth and meat in the form of freshly cooked beef, beef liver and beef that has been cooked until soft. But it also contains pieces of the pak boong vine, fresh blood and crisp-fried pork rind. It was originally sold from boats on the little canal near Victory Monument, where there was an area on a bank where customers could sit and eat their noodles.
Although the noodles were sold from boats, that did not mean that they were paddled in. The vendors brought them in by car and then just loaded them onto the boats. It may be that they claimed that the noodles had been prepared Ayutthaya style, because they were known as kui tio ruea Ayutthaya, or Ayutthaya-style boat noodles.
There are many noodle restaurants now that bring in old boats and set them up inside, then call their wares "Ayutthaya Boat Noodles". Actually, it is most likely the old boat that comes from Ayuttaya, not the noodle recipe.
This, basically, is how beef noodles - these days often pork noodles in disguise - came into being and took their present form. Anyone who looks closely at their history will also learn quite a bit about the way Thai society has changed since they first appeared on the scene.