After My Thai Cooking Lesson, I pretty much failed at the Green Curry Chicken but I tried the Tom Yum Soup and it worked out pretty well. With the pre-made Tom Yum paste my friend Paunnee uses, it’s really pretty easy to put together. I’ll put the photos of the ingredients at the end of the post.
You can use this same basic recipe adding chicken instead of prawn for Tom Yum or you can use chicken and coconut milk and eliminate the Tom Yum paste to make Tom Khaa. I did use chicken this time that I made it because I didn’t have the time to go find fresh prawn. I liked the chicken but I think prawn or a good white meat fish would be better. Tom Yum is more of a seafood flavored soup.
Tom Yum Soup
submitted by Andrea and Paunnee
Ingredients:
10-15 Jumbo Shrimp (Prawn) peeled and de-veined
About 5-6 Kaffir Lime Leaves
1-2 stalks of lemon grass (wash and cut in 3-4″ pieces)
3 cloves of minced garlic
About 1 ” of peeled and sliced Galangal root
2-3 washed Coriander roots (root from Cilantro) Save the coriander leaves for garnish.
Generous handful of Shitake or Oyster mushrooms (washed and cut up)
2-3 TBSP of Tom Yum Paste (start with a little and add until taste and spice is like you like it)
2 tbsp Fish Sauce
1-2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp sugar
2 seedless limes (garnish)
Note: You won’t eat the lime leaves, lemongrass or galangal root.
To Cook:
In a large stock pot, add 4-5 cups of water, lime leaves, lemongrass stalks, garlic, root slices and sit (no heat) for an hour or two for flavors to combine.
About an hour before you’re ready to serve, prepare the prawn. If you’re cooking with chicken, you’ll need to start the chicken early to make sure it has time to cook. Cut the chicken in decent sized chunks. If using prawn, they will go in right at the end since they don’t take much time at all to cook.
So you’ll heat up your water with all the good smelling/tasting stuff inside and then begin adding the paste a little at a time. Get the heat and the flavor like you prefer and just before serving, add the prawn. Don’t stir it too much at this point, just sort of turn the prawn a little so they don’t fall apart.
Serve with steamed Thai Fragrant Rice and you have a wonderful meal. I also made a vegetable stir fry to go with it. I’ll get that recipe up soon.
