A recipe for how to make Red Thai Curry Paste
If you fancy a Red Thai Curry and want to try making your own home made red Thai curry paste and leave the shop bought ones on the shelf, here’s a recipe for you.
Using a pestle and mortar is the traditional way to make a Thai curry paste, if you have the time and arm strength for lots of grinding, go for it, however using a small food processor or blender will do the job in half the time and does not impair the taste.
Ingredients:
This should be enough paste to make 2 large curries.
10-15 small dried red chillies – you can control how hot it is by adding more or less chillies
1 tbls salt
5 cloves of garlic
2 stalks of fresh lemon grass
1 tbls shrimp paste
1 tsp dried turmeric powder
1 tbls chopped galangal (Thai ginger)
1tbls lime juice
How to make red Thai curry paste:
Firstly begin by grinding up the chillies with the salt.
Remove the outer leaves from the lemon grass and chop into pieces, add this into the pestle & mortar along with the garlic and galangal.
Continue grinding until paste like.
Add in the turmeric and shrimp paste.
Finally add the lime juice.
The paste should be a good thick consistency and not runny.
If you want to make the curry paste in advance or have some left over, it can be kept for a couple of weeks in the fridge.
Enjoy your Red Thai Curry!
Sacha El-Haj – 8 Miles from Home
