Thung Thong (ถุงทอง)

The Snack That Looks Like a Bag of Money

ถุงทอง means "golden bag" — the little parcel is deliberately shaped like the money pouch of old, and Wongnai's cooks describe the dish as a traditional Thai snack with an auspicious name: serve it and you wish the eater money and gold forever. Kapook places it at the โต๊ะจีน — the Chinese-style banquet table — and on buffet and upscale restaurant menus, an appetiser that arrives before the main event. TrueID's home cook simply calls it ถุงทอด, "the fried bag".

The build is constant across every source: a filling that is stir-fried first, then wrapped and only then fried. Kapook's classic mixes minced pork and shrimp with corn, peas, onion, carrot and soaked shiitake, bound with a little cornflour, seasoned with seasoning sauce and sugar, and cooked in the wok before it ever sees a wrapper. Aroifin adds the rule that matters most: fry the filling as dry as possible, because a wet filling steams the pastry from inside and the bag never crisps.

Then comes the folding — the part every source treats as the craft. Aroifin's tips: pleat the rim in one direction only, and tie the neck just tight enough to hold, not to strangle. The tie itself varies cook to cook — blanched spring onion in Kapook's classic, celery strips double-knotted in TrueID's home version, garlic chives in the vegetarian version, and in Kapook's party shortcut a strip of the pastry itself sealed with flour glue. The parcels fry over medium heat until golden, and TrueID drains them mouth-down so the oil trapped inside runs out before they hit the plate.

The Recipe (home version, from Kapook and Aroifin)

Aroifin's plum sauce (น้ำจิ้มถุงทอง): 200 g sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 100 g vinegar, 20 g red chillies — dissolve over medium heat, stir in the pounded chillies, done. The party shortcut (Kapook, from Facebook page iCook): 200 g minced pork or chicken fried in 50 g salted butter with 20 g chopped sweet pickled radish, 1 teaspoon pork seasoning powder and 1 tablespoon sugar, then folded through a whole 500 g bag of frozen mixed vegetables. The small-batch version (Wongnai, Charmmy Orn): 90 g each minced pork and shrimp with 2 tablespoons each of chopped carrot and jicama, wrapped in double-stacked wonton wrappers, about a teaspoon per bag, with a from-scratch vinegar-fish-sauce dipping sauce (see the disagreements below).

The Method

1. The paste. Pound the coriander root, garlic and ground white pepper together — Kapook's order — or blend them, as Aroifin does. It goes into the bowl first.
2. The filling. Add the minced pork, minced shrimp, cornflour, corn, peas, onion, shiitake and carrot and mix; season with seasoning sauce, sugar and a pinch of salt.
3. The stir-fry. Cook the filling in 2 tablespoons of oil until done, then set it aside to cool completely — warm filling tears the wrapper, and wet filling kills the crisp.
4. The fold. Spoon the cooled filling onto a spring roll sheet, gather the rim up and pleat it into a bag, working around in one direction, then tie with a blanched spring onion — firm enough to hold the neck, not tight enough to tear it.
5. The fry. Deep-fry over medium heat until golden all over — Wongnai's cooks use a gentler low-medium flame — then lift out and drain. TrueID rests each bag mouth-down so the oil inside runs out.
6. The finish. Serve hot with plum sauce or sweet chilli chicken sauce, or make Aroifin's plum sauce: vinegar, sugar and salt dissolved over medium heat with pounded red chillies stirred through.

Where Thai Sources Disagree

How Western Versions Get It Wrong

• Stuffing raw filling and hoping the fry cooks it. Every Thai source stir-fries the filling first and fries it as dry as possible. Raw pork steamed inside a wrapper leaks, greys, and turns the pastry to mush.
• Serving them with plain sweet chilli sauce by default. Thai tables pair the bags with plum sauce or the bottled sweet chilli chicken sauce — and two of six sources make their own vinegar-based dip from scratch instead.
• Making them the size of spring rolls. Thai recipes keep the bags small — a teaspoon per parcel in the wonton version — so the shape reads as a money bag and the pastry stays crisp. Bigger is just a spring roll with delusions.
• Treating the tie as garnish. The blanched onion, chive or celery around the neck is structural. Skip it and the bag opens in the hot oil and dumps its filling.
• Frying too hot. Medium heat — or a low-medium flame in Wongnai's recipe — gives the filling time to reheat and the pastry time to colour without burning.
• Draining them upright. TrueID drains each bag mouth-down so the oil trapped inside runs out; drained upright, the parcels sit in their own oil and go soft.

UK Ingredient Notes

• Spring roll sheets (แผ่นแป้งปอเปี๊ยะ): frozen Spring Home or TYJ packs at any East Asian supermarket; defrost under a damp cloth so they don't crack. Wonton wrappers work as the stand-in the Wongnai vegetarian cook used — just smaller bags.
• ซอสปรุงรส (seasoning sauce): the golden-label Golden Mountain bottle at Thai grocers; light soy plus a pinch of sugar gets close.
• Jicama (มันแกว) rarely reaches UK shelves — swap in diced water chestnuts or extra carrot, as TrueID's filling does.
• Blanching greens for the ties: spring onion or garlic chive both work — Thai grocers sell กุยช่าย (garlic chives) year-round, and a few stems go a long way.
• Dipping sauces: Pantainorasingh's sweet chilli sauce for chicken (น้ำจิ้มไก่) and plum sauce are both standard on UK Thai supermarket shelves — or make Aroifin's plum sauce from vinegar, sugar, salt and chillies in five minutes.

Sources

This recipe is translated from the following Thai-language sources. Where they disagree, we've said so.