Making your own Thai green curry paste

March 23, 2017

Thai Green Curry Bangkok Style Ingredients.

Making your own curry paste can be fun and wonderfully therapeutic as you bash away with a mortar and pestle. A great Thai green curry depends on the quality of the paste and, so often overlooked, the quality of the coconut milk.

Those two factors are the most important in determining the success of the final dish.

Not your cooking skills, not the quality of the meat you are using, be it fillet steak or the finest organic chicken. It’s the paste and the coconut milk. It is as simple as that. So give yourself a fighting chance to make a great curry, follow the advice here on coconut milk and at least you won’t be one of the many who wonders why their Thai green curry has ended up more like a foul tasting soup than a curry. Believe me, every week I have hundreds of people arrive on this website from search terms such as "Why is my Thai curry so watery?". Don't be one of them!

If you want to make your own curry paste then you can start by avoiding the many recipes that are not worth the cyberspace they occupy, so called “celebrity” chefs being amongst the worst offenders. Many of these recipes are based on the principle that if an ingredient is not obtainable on the shelves of the local supermarket it can be substituted or left out altogether. Follow such a recipe and the time and effort you are putting into making your own paste in the first place is simply wasted.

A good recipe for a Thai green curry paste will include virtually all the ingredients pictured above. A good starting point for those interested in making their Thai pastes from scratch is on a blog called The High Heel Gourmet and goes to great lengths to explain the process in detail.

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well! Of course, I won't be unhappy if you decide it's all too shopping and labour intensive and opt for becoming one of my satisfied customers, all of those 5 star reviews have to count for something:-)

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