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I love Thai food. I am convinced it's the world's greatest cuisine. One of my favorite Thai dishes is a really simple one: Panang curry. I've found a really good Panang curry paste I like, and I'm getting close to a good Panang curry. But I'm not quite there yet. What's the trick to a restaurant-quality curry? I assume there's at least one Goon With Spoon who loves Thai food as much as I do, but is better at cooking it than me. Thai food tips in general would also be appreciated.
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Sep 25, 2016 21:56
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 19:42 |
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Fry your curry paste in hot oil before adding the other aromatics/liquids. Add more sugar than you think you need & a lot more fat than you think you need. 95% of the difference in taste between home and restaurant cooking is that professional cooks aren't scared of throwing in a quantity of sugar, fat & salt that would mortify someone at home trying to cook vaguely healthy. edit: Also, using good coconut milk (the stuff without a bunch of stabilizers) will do wonders. Fresh coconut milk is even better, but is an enormous pain in the rear end.
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Sep 25, 2016 22:05
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My wife is from Thailand and we make curry a couple times a month, it is always dope. The trick is to use the entire can of curry paste (she buys Maesri, it comes in a little can like tuna. I think the Panang one is pink), I've talked to more than one person who's wanted to make Thai food and uses 2 Tbsp paste like the can says and has been let down. Our basic recipe goes like this: Dump the whole can of curry paste in a pot with some oil whatever protein you want to cook, fry those for a bit then add garlic. Fry a little longer and add other veggies, usually onion, sweet potato and a couple Thai chiles without stems (she likes to add bamboo shoot but I'm not a fan). Sweet potatoes are a little unconventional (regular potatoes are more common) but they work, especially in Masaman curry. Fry a little longer and add a can of coconut milk, bring to a boil then turn the heat to low. Flavor with salt/pepper/sugar/fish sauce, maybe some lime juice if you're cooking a hotter type of curry paste. Once the veggies are soft add some basil leaves if you'd like and serve it over a bit of jasmine rice. If you want to cook Thai food go ahead a get a big bottle of fish sauce, it goes into most dishes from what I've experienced. If you have multiple Asian grocers in the area try to figure out if any are run by SE Asian natives, as they'll typically have better stuff for Thai food. Also learn to make lad na (rad nar?) which is the best Thai dish.
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Sep 25, 2016 22:20
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We have lots of Asian grocery options somehow, which owns. We're going through close to a bottle of fish sauce a month.
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Sep 25, 2016 23:07
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I've been trying to make the curry a little lower in fat, which is probably the problem. Next time I'll just go nuts and then make more rice or else add a ton of vegetables and skip the rice to stretch it out and not worry about the calories in the sauce. What's a good paste to coconut ratio? I've been using Mae Ploy, which I like a lot more than every lovely American brand like Taste of Thai, but I mostly just guess wildly.
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Sep 25, 2016 23:08
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FactsAreUseless posted:I've been trying to make the curry a little lower in fat, which is probably the problem. Next time I'll just go nuts and then make more rice or else add a ton of vegetables and skip the rice to stretch it out and not worry about the calories in the sauce. We usually do one can paste for one can of milk.
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Sep 26, 2016 01:29
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What's a good brand of coconut milk? I've been getting Chaokoh and it's ok.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:59
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FactsAreUseless posted:We have lots of Asian grocery options somehow, which owns. We're going through close to a bottle of fish sauce a month. assuming you're talking about the large bottles, that's my burn rate for fish sauce, so you're doing something right at least. sugar and not skimping on curry paste - and frying it as someone else mentioned are really key. I have a big ol tub of palm sugar that I'll take giant quarter/half cup scoops out of every time I do a thai-ish curry. then it's just balancing it out with sour and salt, and you're there!
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Sep 30, 2016 07:34
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Bastard Tetris posted:What's a good brand of coconut milk? I've been getting Chaokoh and it's ok. that's what we used in the vietnamese restaurant I used to work in, so that's what I always grab for.
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Sep 30, 2016 07:37
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Bastard Tetris posted:What's a good brand of coconut milk? I've been getting Chaokoh and it's ok. We use this and Aroy-D, I think Chaokah is a little easier to find though.
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Oct 1, 2016 00:19
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I've found that I prefer Maesri brand for curry paste. I think I've only tried their green, red, and prik khing (cause I thought it was green) versions - but they have a panang too. The price is supposed to be ~$1.30/4 oz can but I have seen some unforgivable levels of markup online. The size of the can is perfect for a 1-2 can coconut milk batch, so you don't have to worry about fridge/freezer space. As long as we're talking Thai curry: Does anyone have a good method for obtaining Thai basil and/or galangal and/or other Thai groceries in the Chicago (preferably northwest suburbs) area? There's Asian grocers everywhere but it seems they cater mostly to the Korean/Chinese/Japanese demographic. When I finally found Maesri curry paste, it was at a Shop&Save, of all places. OH. Also: I've only ever tried Red Boat and Squid brand fish sauce. Can someone confirm that Red Boat is the way to go, and there isn't a more balanced price/quality product out there? FaradayCage fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 11:16
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Minor hijack. Do we have a general Thai thread or a good website for Thai recipes? I want to learn to make Thai food and am not sure where to start. I'm not really much for Thai curries though I'm looking to learn about other things.
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Oct 6, 2016 11:36
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Grand Fromage posted:Minor hijack. Do we have a general Thai thread or a good website for Thai recipes? I want to learn to make Thai food and am not sure where to start. I'm not really much for Thai curries though I'm looking to learn about other things. I've looked. We don't. Given how popular pad thai is, we really should. Hot Thai Kitchen is a good starting point. The main challenge with Thai cooking is finding the ingredients. You either live in a swamp of ingredients or a desert.
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Oct 6, 2016 12:02
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Make sure you get coconut milk with no stabilizers. That way, you can skim the cream off of the top (after letting the can rest for a while), which you will then put over medium heat until it bubbles and spurts and the oil separates from the solids (this is called "cracking the coconut"). Once you have a slick layer of oil with rapidly frying coconut solids, add in your paste, and stir that motherfucker like crazy. Cook the paste until it starts to brown, then dump in the rest of the coconut milk/cream. Use more milk if you like it thinner, more cream if you like it thicker. Frying the paste in "cracked" coconut cream IMO is the most important part of good curry flavor. Don't forget salt. Add sugar to taste (palm sugar is great but just plain white sugar works too). forbidden dialectics fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 15:48
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FaradayCage posted:I've found that I prefer Maesri brand for curry paste. I think I've only tried their green, red, and prik khing (cause I thought it was green) versions - but they have a panang too. The price is supposed to be ~$1.30/4 oz can but I have seen some unforgivable levels of markup online. The size of the can is perfect for a 1-2 can coconut milk batch, so you don't have to worry about fridge/freezer space. Maesri is the good poo poo, like I said one can of Maesri per can of coconut approval is the way to do it. What part of the suburbs are we talking? We used to live around Chicago and would go to H-Mart in either Naperville or Evanston, they had that kind of stuff.
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Oct 10, 2016 05:16
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Heaps of Sheeps posted:Make sure you get coconut milk with no stabilizers. That way, you can skim the cream off of the top (after letting the can rest for a while), which you will then put over medium heat until it bubbles and spurts and the oil separates from the solids (this is called "cracking the coconut"). Once you have a slick layer of oil with rapidly frying coconut solids, add in your paste, and stir that motherfucker like crazy. Cook the paste until it starts to brown, then dump in the rest of the coconut milk/cream. Use more milk if you like it thinner, more cream if you like it thicker. We made a good curry the other day using coconut milk, panang paste, and a bunch of peanut butter, then serving it over eggplant. But I want to make a great traditional curry, and I didn't even know about things like cooking coconut cream.
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Oct 14, 2016 12:53
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I've recently discovered the joy of pressure cooker curry. At a high pressure you get the maillard reaction for browned flavors, and you can cook with meat (preferably bone-in) which infuses its juices with the curry. Just add starches after pressure cooking or else you'll wind up with gross cream-of-potato-curry.
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Oct 18, 2016 18:26
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i was just looking at panang curry recipes and realized that i could buy the less common ingredients (looking @ u, galangal and shrimp paste) online. is making large batches of the curry paste in advance the way to go if I don't want to deal with having to source these ingredients? Will the paste last in the freezer, or would that gently caress it up somehow? It would break my heart to find out in 6 months that my curry paste died during cryosleep
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Nov 14, 2016 22:31
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Slanderer posted:i was just looking at panang curry recipes and realized that i could buy the less common ingredients (looking @ u, galangal and shrimp paste) online. is making large batches of the curry paste in advance the way to go if I don't want to deal with having to source these ingredients? Will the paste last in the freezer, or would that gently caress it up somehow? It would break my heart to find out in 6 months that my curry paste died during cryosleep I've never done it, but I tend to think it would work fine. I've frozen galangal and kaffir lime leaves both and they seem to have come out fine afterwards.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:16
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I've kept homemade rendang paste in the freezer for over a year and it was as delicious as when it was fresh. Shouldn't be much of a difference.
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Dec 7, 2016 15:34
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I just bought an ice tray for preserving paste portions - less messy than making cling-film baggies. Doing a penang right now. Edit: 
sweat poteto fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 03:01
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al-azad posted:I've recently discovered the joy of pressure cooker curry. At a high pressure you get the maillard reaction for browned flavors, and you can cook with meat (preferably bone-in) which infuses its juices with the curry. Just add starches after pressure cooking or else you'll wind up with gross cream-of-potato-curry. Thanks for this. Hadn't thought to make curry in my pressure cooker
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Feb 18, 2017 01:19
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If you're looking for a good Thai cookbook, I'd recommended Thai Cooking / A'Harn Thai by David Thompson. It has a fantastic section on the various ingredients you need and techniques like cracking coconut cream mentioned above. The recipes run the gamut from recognisable to ridiculously authentic, but I consider it like Ruhlman for Thai food.
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Feb 18, 2017 05:34
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There's an absolutely outstanding thai restaurant here and they have stacks of cases of chaokoh coconut milk in the back. Ever since seeing that it's the brand I buy.
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Feb 18, 2017 07:31
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It's interesting to read this thread because just a few months ago i was having the same problem, except with green curry. I switched up my curry paste to a better brand and was looking for a way to improve the curry i was making, and i came across the cracking the coconut cream trick and that was the thing that finally made my thai curry work. I kept getting it almost right, but without cracking the coconut cream by heating it until it separates, it never turned out perfectly like my favorite one from a local restaurant. It seems weird and still doesn't make sense to me why it makes such a huge difference, but it's one of the most important parts of making those coconut curries.
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Feb 18, 2017 15:55
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I had never heard of cracking the cream, but I'll try it next time. My paste doesn't have peanuts in it like I thought it would. How should I integrate peanuts into the curry? Toss some into the blender and mix them in?
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Feb 18, 2017 21:21
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unsweetened peanut butter maybe?
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Feb 19, 2017 01:04
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I had never heard of cracking the cream, but I'll try it next time. Get some peanuts, dry roast them in your frypan then crush them and add to the paste while you're frying it in the coconut cream. Edit - assuming you have access to fresh peanuts, if not, then probably go with the peanut butter suggestion.
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Feb 19, 2017 02:14
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CARL MARK FORCE IV posted:95% of the difference in taste between home and restaurant cooking is that professional cooks aren't scared of throwing in a quantity of sugar, fat & salt that would mortify someone at home trying to cook vaguely healthy. This is true for literally every cuisine.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:11
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While we're still talking about Thai food, any recommendations on how to best store palm sugar? We've started doing Pad Thai complete with homemade sauce, which calls for palm sugar. However, this stuff is always rock-hard so I end up having to just grind the crap out of it with a mortar and pestle. If there's a way to soften it up, or a good way to grind it into a powder for storage, I'm all ears.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:46
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C-Euro posted:While we're still talking about Thai food, any recommendations on how to best store palm sugar? We've started doing Pad Thai complete with homemade sauce, which calls for palm sugar. However, this stuff is always rock-hard so I end up having to just grind the crap out of it with a mortar and pestle. If there's a way to soften it up, or a good way to grind it into a powder for storage, I'm all ears. I'll admit I have the same problem, and have not solved it for myself, but I really think it's just add water and change the phase I seek out tubs of palm sugar that are still semi liquid and just chuck it when it gets to rock stage - but the more sensical thing to do would be to make a heavy syrup out of palm sugar with an appropriate amount of water - and then store it in a bottle. If anyone has better advice, I'm also all ears. love palm sugar. hate palm sugar.
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Feb 20, 2017 05:38
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Microwave until it softens.
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Feb 20, 2017 07:29
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Grate it when you need it, don't sweat storing it.
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Mar 21, 2017 06:47
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I buy palm sugar in a tub of half spheres and was taught to just chop up a sphere with a knife into small bits and toss it in midway through cooking. It'll dissolve pretty quickly.
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May 3, 2017 19:16
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