Thai Green Curry Recipe แกงเขียวหวาน - Hot Thai Kitchen

Sawasdee ka. Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. Today we are remaking one of the very first Hot Thai Kitchen episodes I did and it's also one of the most popular Thai dish, I guess globally. We're remaking Green Curry or Kaeng Keow Wan. Now as a review, Kaeng is curry, Keow is green and Wan is sweet, even though it's not a particularly sweet curry so I'm not quite sure where that came from. But anyhow, we're going to get started and it is, trust me, a new and improved recipe from last time so if you've already made that one, this is going to be even better. So we're going to start first with reducing our coconut milk. Okay, I've got here a cup and three quarters of a cup of coconut milk and I'm going to add about three quarters and I'm going to reduce this until it's thickened. The coconut milk is made from oil and non-oil bits and so as you reduce it, reduce it, you destabilize that emulsion and eventually the coconut oil will separate and that's what we want when we make a Thai curry. If your coconut milk doesn't do that, that's totally fine. A lot of canned and processed coconut milk have been homogenized to stabilize them. It's totally fine, just follow along and I'll tell you what to do. So I've got here some green curry paste. Now I'm not making green curry paste from scratch because that requires using green Thai chilies which I can't find at this point. I will though include a recipe for how you can make green curry paste so if you just want to know the ingredient list, it'll be included in the written portion. And then I'm also using chicken thighs today. Last time we used chicken breast and I've decided that chicken thighs taste better. And then we'll see how that gets used. So we'll come back to this in a second once our coconut milk is ready. So my coconut milk has reduced until it's pretty thick and there's not very much left and you notice it's kind of hard to see on camera but the edges you can see that the coconut is starting to separate. If yours doesn't, don't worry about it, just reduce it until thick and proceed with the recipe as per usual. So at this point I'm going to add in my curry paste. This recipe is spicy so if you don't want to make it super super spicy, you're going to want to use less of the curry paste. So you're just going to saute this until it's really aromatic. So again if you are going to use less curry paste but then you still want the paste to be bright green because if you use less then you're going to have less color going on. So what I would suggest then, wow this stove is crazy, what you can do is you can take some basil leaves, chop it up a little bit and grind it in a mortar and pestle along with the curry paste and that's a way that you can actually boost the green color of the curry without adding a lot of paste and making it too too spicy. Anything, even spinach will work, it'll just be kind of a neutral flavor thing but Thai basil also adds a nice flavor and I would have done that today but just kind of forgot about it actually. Can you see that? The oil starting to bubble around the edges of the curry paste and that's the coconut oil that is separated from the coconut milk. And then you're going to add, at this point, your chicken. Now, if you're using chicken breast, the process will be a little different. You will not add the chicken right now, you'll add it at the end because you don't want to overcook chicken breast but chicken thigh, we're actually going to let this simmer and braise so I'll include how to deal with chicken breast separately in the written portion of the recipe. The heat! Once it's all mixed up, I'm going to add the rest of my coconut milk, some chicken stock. Now this is the difference, I think last time I used water but we now know that chicken stock will add so much more flavor and body and richness that water will not add. And we're going to bring this to a simmer and we're going to let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the chicken is fork tender. Now you want to give the chicken some flavor to absorb, right? So you also want to go in with some palm sugar, which is going to add not only sweetness but that rich butterscotch-y flavor that palm sugar is so great for. And also 1 tablespoon of fish sauce. This is probably not going to be all I need but I want to start out with this. As per usual, if you're dealing with store-bought curry paste, it's usually pretty salty already so you don't want to overdo it in the beginning. Leave some room at the end for adjustment. Oh and also I want to add my kaffir lime leaves. Kaffir lime leaves are going to add that sort of bright citrus-y freshness and it'll help lighten the rich, contrast the richness of the coconut milk. So it's really great in green curry. We're going to add that now because it is a sturdy herb and it can handle a bit of a simmering. Mmm! It's looking good already. So bring this to a simmer and then count 10 minutes or 15 depending on how big your chicken is and we'll be right back. You know how I was saying earlier that if you wanted to boost the green color you could pound some Thai basil leaves with the curry paste and add it? Well if you forgot to do that like I did, there's still a way to do it. So you can take some basil leaves and put it in the blender with a little extra coconut milk and then just add it in now and it will still give that nice boost of green color. Just make sure it's, you know, it's fine-ish so you don't get chunks of leaves. See, it looks nice and green already. I mean don't make it too green, you don't want this to look like Shrek. I think that's enough. So that's probably maybe like 10 basil leaves and just enough coconut milk to get it going. So our chicken is nice and fork tender, I tested it just now, it's perfect. Now it's time to add our vegetables. Now, last time I used Thai eggplant, which is quite common, but this time I'm going to show you something different. I'm going to use bamboo shoots, okay? Bamboo shoots, the way, the easiest way to get them is to get them either in cans or they come sometimes in vacuum-packed, plastic vacuum-packed bags. They're already cooked because they're a pain to process. So all you have to do is add them to the pot and heat them up. Now they come in lots of different shapes and sizes. I like these ones, or sometimes they'll come in big chunks and then you can cut them however you want. So in these go, and we're just going to bring the curry back to a boil to make sure that everything is hot and heated through. Mmm, look at that. So, so good. So while that's coming to a boil, let's talk about our color elements. So we're going to add some spur chilies. Now as you can see by the frost, it's frozen, which is perfectly fine, you can freeze spur chilies. You can also use red bell peppers, and really it's just to give the curry some contrast of colors so it looks much more beautiful. With bell peppers, you just want to do fine juliennes. Okay, so once you've got that, and I've also got one last thing, our Thai basil. Our Thai basil, we're going to stir it in at the end because otherwise they will turn black. And it's just really going to add that final element of floral aroma that's going to round off our curry. And Thai basil works really well with spicy dishes. There's something about the flavor, the sweet smell of basil that kind of mellows out the spice a little bit. So I'm going to give it a taste. Mmm. Ooh, that's spicy. I'm going to add a little bit more fish sauce. It's a little flat right now, but just a little bit. I'm going to turn this off now. Give it one more taste. Yeah, oh yes. Mmm! So good! So when you taste curry, remember that you're eating this with rice, and the rice is going to mellow out the strength of the flavor a little bit. So make sure that when you taste it, it's really strong. Not that you're making it too salty, but you don't want to make it, oh, nice and comfy. No, you want it to really kick your senses. And so once you put it together with the rice, then it's at its happy place. So at this point, we're going to add our spur chilies, Thai basil. Mmm. Look how beautiful that is! Oh my god! Okay, the coconut oil that we separated in the beginning, as it sits, you're going to start to see just little thin layers of really beautiful, shiny coconut oil, green coconut oil, that's going to float on top, and that is a sign of a well-made Thai curry. And again, if yours doesn't do that, don't worry about it. It's just different coconut milk. Sometimes it doesn't work. So now we're ready to serve this with our jasmine rice. Now in Thailand, we eat the curry and the rice usually separately, so you won't be served a plate of rice and the curry poured all over it. Usually it's a part of a bigger meal, you're sharing several things. But at some lunch places, you get that, but for the most part, this is served as part of a bigger meal. And by the way, I said that the green curry is made using green chilies, and it doesn't just affect the color, it actually affects the flavor as well, because green chilies are under-ripe red chilies, so they have a little bit of a grassier note, whereas the ripe ones, the red ones, are fruitier, and that's why green curry has that distinct flavor that is so good. So there is our green curry. Get some sauce on it. I'm going to have a piece of bamboo shoot. Mmm. The chicken is super tender. And not only is it tender, it's flavorful all throughout, and that's the benefit of letting it braise and simmer for 10-15 minutes, it really absorbs everything in there. And the bamboo shoot has a really nice crunch, doesn't have too much of a flavor in and of itself, but the crunch serves a textural variety that's really, really well appreciated in a rich dish such as this one. So I hope you give this a try, and if you've tried my old recipe, try this one again, and trust me, you will see a difference, and this one is really, really good, and it's really quick and easy too. You can totally do this, do a lot of it, and save it for the rest of the week for your lunch. So if you've given this a try, let me know how it goes, send me a message, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, send me a photo if you have one. If you enjoy the show, please click to subscribe so I can keep doing these recipes for you, and the recipe, as per usual, will be on hotthaikitchen.com, and I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal.