Thai Green Curry
This Thai green curry is great made with a homemade green curry paste or a jarred curry paste. All you need is 1 onion, 2 garlic, 2 tbsp green curry paste, 1 tin coconut milk, chicken thigh if you want some meat, veggies, lime. Dinner on the table in 30 minutes.
Thursday night is curry night in our house
This of course comes with the caveat that if we get sick of curry, I’m going to switch this up straight away, but honestly I doubt it.
I implemented curry night in the middle of Sydney lockdown. Some time in July when cooking for Pete for lunch everyday felt like a lot. If I look back it was likely lockdown fatigue over the ‘feeding one extra mouth’ thing and all that goes with that. Communicating lunch time, navigating a 1 year old, all the washing up and you know… lockdown.
Structured meal nights can add a nice predicability and allow your brain to go on autopilot.
Curry is my go-to when my brain is somewhere else.
When I’m tired or bleh, I rely heavily on my ritual meals. The family favourites we all love. I know what makes them work and I know they’ll work for me, so I can head into auto-pilot mode while I cook. And so I make curry.
Pimping your Thai green curry
If you’re using a store bought green curry paste, good on you for outsourcing some of your cooking work. Curry pastes are simple but they do require gathering of a lot of ingredients. I believe a jar or 2 of curry paste is great stored in the pantry for emergency quick dinners.
If you’re using a store bought paste you may want to pimp your curry to add some unique flavours to it. This of course is optional, but here are some ideas.
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Add extra ginger, garlic and lemongrass
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Kaffir lime leaves
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A good squeeze of lime before serving
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Top with lots of coriander
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Top with lime pickles or kimchi
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Thai basil
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Mint
Can I feed green curry to my baby?
This is 100% up to you but you need to beware that green curry is hot, especially for little mouths which are new to food.
Cool down the spice in your curry by mixing through coconut yoghurt.
Another option is to cook all the ingredients for the curry without the curry paste. Scoop some out for baby, then add curry paste and cook for 5 minutes before serving.
Serve your curry with
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A fresh pot of rice
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Soba noodles
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Vermicelli noddles
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Potato mash – i know, what? It’s really good. Our local Thai used to serve their Massaman like this, it was so good.
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A fresh crunchy noodle salad
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Smacked cucumbers
My favourite store bought curry paste brand is
I use the brand Mae Ploy for my curry paste. You can pick this up in Coles, Woolies and IGA.
I love it because it is free of random vegetable oils, preservatives and additives. It is purely what you’d find in a homemade Thai green curry paste.
Another favourite is Church Farm. They have a green, red and an Indian too. They’re all worth the investment and, well, yum.
Thai Green Curry
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 brown onions
- Optional: 2 chicken thigh or 4 would work - diced
- Optional: 2 kaffir lime leaves or 1 stem of curry leaves
- 2 - 3 tbsp green curry paste
- 4 garlic cloves
- Optional: 1 tbsp ginger grated
- 1 cup chopped sweet potato about 300g
- 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
- 1 tin coconut milk or coconut cream
- I mix it up. I don’t have a preference although I know people do
- Optional: add 1/2 cup of bone broth or a scoop of bone broth concentrate
- A handful of green beans or 1 bunch bok choy
Instructions
- Preheat big pot on medium heat. Add 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil.
- Chop onions and add to pot. Sautee for 10 minutes until clear and delicious. Stir frequently so they don’t burn.
- Add kaffir lime/curry leaves and curry paste, cook for 1 minute to activate the spice flavours.
- This step is important to get the flavours from your curry paste going.
- Add garlic and ginger. Mix well. Cook for 1 minute.
- Add chicken thigh, sweet potato, mushrooms, coconut milk and broth (if using). Mix well and bring to boil, reduce to simmer, put lid on - cook for 15 minutes.
- Check chicken and sweet potato for to see if they’re cooked. If not, keep cooking for another few minutes.
- The beautiful thing about chicken thigh is its fat content. Meaning we have a leighway between over cooking our chicken. Keep an eye on it but revel in the fact you’re off the hook and if you forget about your chicken for a few minutes all will be fine.
- With around 7 minutes to go, remove lid from pot and allow some liquid to reduce.
- Make sure you keep a gentle simmer in the pot.
- With 1-2 minutes left to go, add your beans/bok choy.
- As these are light veggies, they don’t take very long to cook. Submerge into the curry and leave for 2 minutes.
- Scoop into bowls with warm rice . Squeeze lime on top with a crack of black pepper.
