Thai Red Curry Paste
I have a couple of recipes on this site that use Thai red curry paste. While it’s easy to buy this, I find it’s often over spiced and too salty. You can always add more chilli to the dish later and get the taste you’re after.
You have to give this a try, it’s absolutely worth the effort involved. You’ll need to get some of the ingredients from your local Asian supermarket which for me is always a fun visit.
Ingredients
- 8 dry red spur chillies
- 2 teaspoons ground white pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
- 1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
- 10 – 15 cloves garlic (yes that is right, 10-15)
- 1 tablespoon fresh coriander root (use coriander stems if you can’t get root)
- 1 tablespoon sliced lemongrass
- 5 Thai shallots
- 1 tablespoon sliced galangal
- 1/2 the peel of 1 kaffir lime, try not to get too much of the white pith
- 1/2 teaspoon shrimp paste
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Equipment
- A good stone mortar and pestle set.
Method
- Soak your spur chillies in warm water for about 10 minutes.
- Cut the chillies into centimetre lengths, discarding the stalks.
- Add them with the salt to your mortar and pestle. Grind them until they are starting to form a paste.
- Now add your garlic cloves and grind them down.
- Finally, add all the other ingredients and grind until they form a smooth paste. The longer you grid them the better.
Now you can cheat and make your paste in a food processor, it needs to be a smooth paste though.
We use this paste in the following dishes:
If you’re looking for more authentic Thai recipes then I can recommend the Eating Thai Food website.
We used the paste during our live cook, see the video below.
0 Comments