Science behind Thai Cuisine: Applied science to teach Thai cooking

Thai foods had become well-known and came up on top ranking for years continually. The promotion of teaching methodology and pathway to train how to cook Thai foods with the concept of “Good practice: Science behind Thai Cuisine” was important, in order to support the STEM Education and to train the students to gain critical thinking, by the way they should have gain solving problems’ skill about cooking Thai foods in future. The objective of the research was to 1) analysis the scientific theory related to the Thai cuisine. 2) Thai food recipes development with scientific explanation, and 3) Implementation the recipes had studied with the students. The populations were 237 students who registered to study and training the course about Thai cooking for business. Questionnaire was used for data collection. Frequencies, percentage, mean and standard deviation wasused for data analysis.

The result of the study revealed into 3 parts-1. There were 16 theories of “Science behind Thai cuisine”, by analytical scientific theory related to the Thai cooking methodology from the body knowledge of science, such as; 1) Biology and bacteria for cooking. 2) Chemistry; osmosis, reaction of acid and base, 3) Physic; matter particularities and heat. Also found the theories about the balance of taste and the combination of ingredient in Thai cuisine was important and necessary for teaching process for the student to understand and learn, in order to become a professional Thai chef in future. 2. 26 recipes of Thai dishes were found, such as; starters, one dish meal, soup, curry and stir fried, also snack, dessert and beverage. The recipes development was explained with scientific methods to show cooking methodology for Thai delicious foods and professionally for household and businesslike cooking. 3. The result of teaching implementation of the recipes had studied found that, the teaching cooking Thai foods with scientific explanation, known as “Science behind Thai cuisine” had improved critical thinking ability for the students, they had learned and improved thinking process of critical expression, they have fun and enjoy the class, the teaching technique and methodology was not boring, they also learned teaching techniques to memorized the recipes a lot more easily, they had more confident to analysis and believed from the lessons that they would be able to solved such problems from cooking Thai foods by using scientific methods in future. They had gained confidence to cook in businesslike in future. Conclusion; Thai foods become well-known, Thai foods’ business had established more and more abroad, eating good Thai foods bring happiness and experiences, education and well train for cooking the right Thai foods and taste with the education transformation of knowledge and career is important for all. The recommendation: 1) research in order to promote Thai cuisine to be known as “Science and Art of High level Thai cuisine ”is important and necessary. 2) Thai government and stakeholders sectors needed to promote Thai cuisine as the World heritage of human culture and creation is necessary.