OK, so I promised this blog would be about real cooking and real technique, but I do have a confession to make. I can’t seem to make good Thai curry. It’s not from lack of effort. I’ve bought the fresh lemongrass, thai peppers, authentic spices, etc and made it all from scratch. I even posted my first attempts here.  What can I say? It doesn’t taste as good as the restaurant and the consistency just isn’t there.

Some day I plan to master that. In the meantime, this is how to make curry that’s good and tastes similar to Thai restaurants.

Yes, a prepared canister of Thai curry paste. Make sure it’s a real Thai paste found at Asian groceries (not the Americanized stuff) Follow the directions on the back of the label (you will need some coconut milk, fish sauce (replaces salt), sugar and some extra hot peppers, if desired).  Simmer your sliced meat and vegetables in the resulting curry sauce and “viola”.  Sorry, but it works.  It’s all natural and the canister is great for storing the leftover paste (one package makes quite a few curries).  If I ever figure out how to make it taste great from scratch, I’ll be sure to post.

I don’t even think of it as cheating, too much, because the ingredient list is just the things you would normally put into a food processor and blend together.  And some of them are hard to find.  Things like lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, thai ginger, etc.  I don’t see any chemicals or weird stuff on the list.  Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised at all to hear of some Thai restaurants using a similar product.

Asian grocery stores carry this stuff, or have a look on Amazon or your online store of choice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 6:15 PM and is filed under Food Products, Recipes: Entrees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.