Slow cooked Thai chicken curry soup

I have been very slack on the cooking blog front for two reasons. (1) I went back to some temporary full time work, helping out my ex-boss as he looked for a new assistant and (2) I have been living in an apartment with no kitchen and cooking facilities, hence much less cooking. Between the two, there has only been some intermittent cooking on weekends and next to no experimentation. My sincere apologies.

I do, however, have a post for you today.

This weekend, we managed to head home to spend 3 days which was glorious as I got to sleep on my own bed, which felt fantastic.

We also have a couple of nights home and I felt energetic enough to cook though I felt like I was coming down with the flu. The Boy has had the flu for a week and he has been very poorly. I think I caught it but started dosing myself with the doTerra oils "flubomb" and quickly overcame it. More on that in another post.

So, for dinner on Friday night, The Boy, who has been sick, always likes something hot and spicy to give a little zing to his little germ bugs.

I saw my friend Suzie post a picture of this Thai chicken curry soup which she found somewhere on Facebook and I really have no way of pointing to the original source. This looked delicious though, so I decided to make it. Plus, it's slow cooked, which is a bonus cos it usually means that it will be easy to prepare and I was not up to a complicated meal.

Here's the RECIPE for the dish:

Ingredients:

• 2 Onions (Browned )

• 8 Chicken Thighs (Browned)

• 1 Carrot Thinly sliced (Roasted)

• 2 Red Capsicums Thinly sliced (Roasted)

• 6 Teaspoons of Minced Garlic

• 6 Teaspoons of Ginger

• 6 Fresh Mushrooms Sliced

• 1 Can of Coconut Milk

• 1 Bunch of chopped up Basil

• 3 Heaped Teaspoons of Red Curry Paste 

• 4 Cups of Chicken stock

• 3 Tablespoons of Fish Sauce

• 3 Tablespoons of Lime Juice

• 2 Tablespoons of Raw Sugar

Instructions:

• Brown onion in a pan

• Brown thinly sliced chicken thighs 

• In a large bowl mix garlic, ginger, fish sauce, sugar, stock, curry paste.

• Put in slow cooker, chicken and onion pour the sauce over 

• Cook for 4 Hours on high or 7 hours on low

• Roast up capsicum and carrot

• 1/2 an hour before serving stir into slow cooker, roasted capsicum & carrot, chopped basil, mushrooms, 1 can of coconut milk

• Just before serving stir in lime juice !!

Explodes with Flavor !
Serve with Crusty Bread

Of course, I never follow the recipe exactly. I forgot to buy 2 red capsicums, so I ended up with only one.

I had about 5 carrots left in the fridge, so I used them all up.

I bought a small punnet of mushrooms, about 250g and rather than have a bunch of mushrooms leftover, since I was not cooking the rest of the week I decided to use them all. I also didn't slice the mushrooms but halved them instead as I wanted something chunkier to chew on for the soup.

I was very generous in my heaped tablespoons of red curry paste. :-)

I added 3 fresh chilis which I sliced up and added to the stock mix to slow cook for a little added zing and flavor.

I did roast the carrots and capsicum but I don't think I'll do that again next time. I think it doesn't make that much of a difference between roasting and not roasting in this instance because there is already so much flavor from the soup mix.

I didn't slice the chicken too thinly because I knew that the chicken pieces needed to be fairly large as they would fall apart in the cooking after being in the slow cooker for such a long time.

I cooked my soup on high for 3.5 hours and then added the last ingredients and cooked it on high for another 45 minutes. That seemed to have worked well in terms of integrating all the flavors and the chicken meat was very tender.

This turned out to be a very flavorful soup which was bursting with flavor. It's not a spicy soup either, so even if you can't handle heat, you would still be able to make it and enjoy a very tasty soup.

Add some noodles to it and you will have a Thai curry laksa.

A big thank you to my friend Suzie for the recipe.

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd


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Thai red beef curry ... my way, the easy way!!

I'm sorry there haven't been many posts recently. We've just moved house and busy settling in, plus day job deadlines just got in the way. I'm so sorry, but I'm back on track now. On to the post ...

I found a jar of Thai red curry paste in the pantry and since I did not know what to make for dinner tonight, I decided to make a Thai red curry using the curry paste and do it with beef. In case you're curious, this is the curry paste I used.

As always, I sort of followed the instructions in the jar but I added a few additional things of my own, so this is not your traditional Thai red beef curry, but more my version of it.

Here's the recipe for what I did:

Ingredients:

• 1 jar Thai red curry paste (any brand)
• 2 brown onions cut into large chunks
• 800g casserole beef cut into slightly large bite size chunks
• 1 large can coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons garlic and chili sauce / paste
• 2 cups beef stock
• 1 heaped teaspoon hot chili powder (optional, only if you want it to kick)
• Olive oil
• Salt to taste

Instructions:

• In a large frying pan, slightly cook the onions in some olive oil until slightly translucent, remove.
• Add some more olive oil into the frying pan, put in the whole jar of curry paste and fry over heat for about 2 minutes.
• Add beef chunks and coat beef in curry paste and fry for a few minutes until the beef is well coated.
• Transfer beef chunks and curry paste into a dutch oven, add onions into the pot.
• Put the pot over heat and pour in the can of coconut milk. Note: shake the can well before opening.
• Add another can (about 2 cups) of beef stock and mix well with coconut milk.
• Add garlic and chili sauce, and taste to see if you are happy with the taste. If not, add a little more chili sauce and if you want more kick in your curry, add the chili powder.
• Bring the curry to a boil and cover.
• Put into oven at 120°C for 3 hours, checking occasionally that it has not dried up, and adding more beef stock if necessary.
• After 3 hours and beef is tender, bring out of oven.
• Add salt to season to your taste if necessary.
• Serve over rice with some vegetables on the side or a light green salad.

This is a pretty easy curry to make overall, mostly because the curry paste is already pre-made and you don't have to do that from scratch. I expect it would be a lot more involved if you (or I) had to make the curry paste from scratch, but I have to admit that I don't like doing that, just because I don't like the way the stuff makes my entire apartment smell, so I'm happy to get it out of a jar. Just make sure that you get a good quality Asian brand, though any brand will do, because you are adjusting the flavor with additional chili sauce and stock to suit.

Most curries will tell you that you can just bring it to a boil and simmer over the stove for 10 minutes until the beef is cooked and it will be ready to serve. I don't do that because (1) I like my beef to be tender and slow cooking it in the oven will give me lovely tender beef and (2) it also allows the curry, chili and stock flavors to slowly integrate. You will get a much more well rounded flavor with slow cooking it.

I used beef stock in the recipe because I like that it gives the curry a lot more depth in the flavor, otherwise, I find the curry has too many high notes and not enough depth. If you don't want to use beef stock, feel free to just use water. With water, you will get a lot of just the curry paste coming through and I often find that the flavors are not well rounded enough with just the curry paste, hence the beef stock.

The entire apartment smelled a great deal of curry for the afternoon as this was cooking in the oven, but by the time I was done, the flavors were well integrated and the beef was tender. Definitely worth slow cooking in the oven!!

In total, I slow cooked the beef for 3 hours at 120°C for 3 hours and then another hour at 90°C but that was more because we were not ready to eat yet and I kept it in the oven to keep it warm. Something to note too, at 120°C, the liquid did not dry up though the curry sauce did thicken up a little, and I did not have to add more stock.

The curry was absolutely delicious and The Boy even had seconds, which is unusual these days because he's on a sort of diet and cutting back on the quantities he's eating.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd

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