Mae Ploy Red Curry Paste 1 Kg

Product Information

Fish Sauce– Fish sauce provides the authentic flavor of a true Thai Red Curry recipe. It adds a savory umami richness that rounds out the dish. If making a vegetarian version, soy sauce can be used as a substitute. One of our favorite things about Thai curries is that they are incredibly versatile dishes. Want to make the dish a little hotter? Add more curry paste or jalapeno peppers. Don't like a certain vegetable? Swap it out! Want to try out a different curry paste and protein source? The base recipe is a great starting point still! Changing Thai Curry Spice Level Palm Sugar– This is a lightly sweet, subtly citrus sugar that comes from coconut palm or sugar palm trees. It is sold in small dried cakes. It is easiest to measure if it is grated or soaked in a small amount of warm water for about 10 minutes until soft. Light brown sugar will work as a substitute in this curry. Ditto for coconut milk. Any sort will do, just don’t get “lite” coconut milk. You need that fat. Photo by Holly A. Heyser

There are lots of recipes out there for homemade Thai curry paste, and the beauty of them is that you can alter the ingredients to meet your needs, and for most of you reading this that means making it less fiery so you can use more in your red coconut curry. I’ll post mine soon. We prefer to use pre-formed palm sugar disks in this recipe as opposed to granular palm sugar. Weigh out these disks and use 75-110 grams depending on your preferred level of sweetness (typically 2-3 disks but sizes can vary). Palm sugar disks are sometimes fused together and require 15-30 seconds in the microwave to pull apart. Mae Ploy Red Curry Paste contains no added MSGs, preservatives, or artificial colors. It is made with dried red chilis (for flavor and color) and a special blend of thai spices. Combine chilis, aromatics, and shrimp paste in a mortar and pestle, blender, or food processor and blend until smoothMaesri is a paste with a good flavour base, but it is significantly weaker than the top 3, and would require a larger amount of paste. If you're sensitive to salt and can handle just a little spice, this is what I would use so that you have room to add more paste without fearing that it would become too salty or spicy. Take 8 dry spur chilies (prik chee fa haeng), soak them in water for a few minutes to rehydrate them, then drain the chilies. Cut off their stems, and you can then chop them into small centimeter pieces. Some people take out the seeds to make their red curry paste less spicy, but in my opinion you’ve got to keep the seeds. Add the liquid part of the coconut milk, a tablespoon of (palm if you have it) sugar and a cup (250ml) of water, a tablespoon of fish sauce and bring to the boil for a minute.

High-Walled Pot for Cooking – Curry can be easily made in any pot with tall sides. A Dutch oven , wok , or saute pan will work well. In Thai cuisine, the green one is the most used curry paste. In fact, this curry paste will offer your recipe a very bright color. In a world where authenticity in food is highly valued (and for good reason), many home cooks want to work with real flavors and real ingredients, avoiding shortcuts and workarounds. But sometimes that desire butts up against reality: We don’t always have access to grocery stores with wide selections, time to simmer and braise for hours, or money to buy another round of spices.

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If I want a milder red Thai curry that the kids will enjoy, I use Morrison's own brand Thai red curry paste. It's still got a great authentic flavour (very fragrant with lots of lemongrass in it), but is actually quite mild. Generally speaking, the smaller the dried chili peppers, the more spicy they are. To make your own red curry paste, use dried chili peppers that are about 6 to 8 inches in length. These are easy to work with and are more mild than the very small Thai Bird’s Eye Chilis. The nice thing about starting with more mild chili peppers is that you can always use red pepper flakes to add more spice to the curry paste. Outside of Thailand, the larger chilis that you want to use are typically from North America and are labeled “California Chilis”, “Southwestern Chilis”, or “New Mexico Chilis”. I actually get them from a Mexican grocery store. Maesri - the only brand that comes in a can, and also the only one with sugar in the ingredient list. For each type of paste, there’s a basic expectation of what it should taste like; but like any recipe, everyone has their own specific formula, hence all these brands.