So many people think they could never make this dish taste like they have them in restaurants. Follow the basic pattern of cooking and keep in mind the two principles of cooking and you will be making this dish to suit exactly how you want it!
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- Oil
- Chicken
- Onion
- Garlic
- Mae Ploy Thai Green Curry Paste
- Potatoes
- Carrots
- Bell Peppers / Capsicum
- Peas
- Coconut Cream
- Salt and Pepper
Preparation:
- Chop onion and garlic to desired size or mince garlic
- Cut and marinate chicken or selected meat
- Chop potatoes, carrots and bell peppers/capsicum to desired size
Method:
- Heat oil over medium heat.
- Fry chicken (or meat) in oil until cooked all the way through
- Remove chicken from pan and onto a plate or bowl
- Fry onion until starting to caramalise
- Add garlic and fry until both onion and garlic are caramalised
- Add curry paste and fry evenly and quickly making sure not to burn the paste
- Add potatoes and fry until bottom of the pot gets too dark or potatoes have a coating of crispness
- Add stock or water
- Mix thoroughly and scrape all the crunchy bits that have stuck to the bottom pan
- Add carrots, bring to the boil and simmer until potatoes are cooked
- Add peas, and bell peppers/capsicum
- Stir and add coconut cream
- Stir and add extra salt and pepper to taste
- Cook until ready
- Add chicken and heat gently for a little bit longer until the chicken is hot
- Serve and eat!
Additional Notes:
- To make this vegetarian is an easy process, instead of the meat use a tofu towards the end of your cooking
- This is a gluten free meal
Video Transcript
Hi there and welcome to good for you living, this video is part of the cooking basics where I’m showing you a simple 2 step method that will unlock the secrets to cooking. Ok I’m known to exaggerate a little but stick with me while I make a chicken thai green curry.
Whether served thick like a sauce or thin like a soup the spicy flavour marries so well with the creamy texture. So let me tell you more about this 2 step method. First it’s about oil and water, you separate your ingredients that you are going to cook in oil and those that you are going to cook in water. And second everything is a salad, so if you have ever made a salad before, you’ll be able to make this without a problem.
So I’ve already given away my secret which isn’t really a secret, but just keep these things in mind and you will be able to break down recipes and see the pattern emerging. So I hope this is going to be good for you and let’s get into the kitchen.
Ok we need to start with a pot on medium heat and I’m going to melt some butter.
Let’s have a look at our oil ingredients first. We have some onion, chicken, garlic, and thai green curry paste. For our oil ingredients we have potatoes, carrots, red capsicum or bell peppers, some peas and coconut cream.
Ok that’s all melted through and we can add our chicken. We are only going to cook this for a little bit, but actually just want to brown it to lock in the juices and flavour.
Ok that’s a bit over a minute and we can see that there are no more raw bits showing. I actually marinated the chicken and you can see a simple marinade method I used just by clicking on the link below. You can see we have some nice crunchy bits at the bottom of the pot, don’t worry this is what we want, it’s going to add to our sauce or gravy later. We’ll add some more butter and keep it on a medium heat. Let’s add some onion and cook for a bit.
That’s nicely caramalised now so we’ll add the garlic and turn the heat down a little bit just before I add the curry paste. You can even remove the pot altogether off the heat as the temperature of the oil will be enough to give the paste a bit of a saute. I’m using a big heap of paste because this is a rather large pot and I like it quite spicy you should adjust to your own needs though. Mix and stir vigorously as the paste is very fine and we don’t want it to burn.
I’m going to throw in my potatoes and the same here I just want to sear it a little bit just to see if I can get a bit of crunch out of it. But I can’t do it for too long as I can see at the bottom of the pan is getting very dark and almost about to burn. So I need to add my stock or broth, I’m actually just using water you can do the same if you want or you can use a stock. I only want a little bit of water as the coconut cream is going to be the main form of liquid. Now I can turn up the heat here and start to scrape the bottom of the pot and you will be able to see that it’s making a lovely brown sauce. If I was to thicken that it would make the best gravy.
Ok I’m pretty happy with the bottom being nice and smooth and I can add my carrots, give them a bit of a mix through before we go ahead and cover it and bring it to the boil.
So that’s being boiling away nicely and we’ll give them a quick mix and it’s looking quite nice so we need to boil this until the potatoes are cooked. I want to check the potato so the best thing to do is find the largest piece of potato and stick a fork in it to see if it’s done. Yep that’s quite soft and easy for the fork to stick in so I can move on to my next water ingredient that don’t take that much time to cook. We have our red bell peppers or capsicum and our peas and I’m going to let that simmer for a little bit just to reduce the liquid a bit more so the taste intensifies.
Finally we can add our coconut cream, I’m going to let you decide how much you want to put in, I would go a third of a tin though, but you can add the whole thing if you like it won’t hurt it and if you want it more like a soup then go for it.
You have to remember that this paste is quite spicy, so the more cream you do add the more spice diminishes. Let’s mix it for a bit and that does look great! The sauce has lightened and the colour of the vegetables are still there. That’s pretty much done. Let’s just give it a final bit of seasoning, I’ll add some pepper here, just quickly turn down the heat a little bit and give it a mix through. Yeah I’m really liking this. And now since I don’t use a stock and only use water I’m going to add some of this veggie salt. You can use normal salt, I just like using veggie salt and water as an alternative to ready made stock. If you have time just turn down the heat and put it on a slow simmer until you are ready to eat or the sauce consistency is to your liking. Now that is fine as a vegetarian dish so if you are catering for vegetarians and meat eaters you have done it all in one go. Let’s give it a bit of a taste to see if it needs anything.
Yep that’s great!
Ok let’s put our chicken back into the curry and mix it through. The reason I took the chicken out is because I didn’t want it cooked for too long with the curry and risk it drying out. We give it quick mix and we have our chicken thai green curry. So remember the 2 steps, first we cooked our oil ingredients and then put in our water ingredients. once we added the water we used the fried bits to become our stock so make sure you scrape the bottom of that pot and of course you can see how it resemebles a salad, we just mixed and tossed our ingredients around and our salad dressing was our sauce. A quick garnish of shallots and done.
There it is chicken thai green curry. I like serving this dish with brown rice, I find that the thicker rice goes so well with the thicker creamy spicy sauce and if you want to substitute chicken for another meat you can go a beef, pork or even seafood. And if you want to go vegetarian you can use a hard tofu or my favourite a fried tofu. You see that I fried the chicken and then removed it, the reason for this was because I wanted to boil the potatoes in a vigorous manner. Just to soften them up you don’t want raw potatoes. But if you are not using potatoes then you can treat this more like a stir fry and cook it under 8 minutes. Just follow the same 2 step method, first it’s about oil and water and remember everything is a salad. Have good preparation and you will succeed. The key here is to experiment, practice and start your own signature dish.
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