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Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. When I started Hot Thai Kitchen way back in 2009, there was no question in my mind what the first video was going to be. It had to be toyamong, Thailand's famous hot and sour soup. Aside from the fact that it's just beloved all around the world, I thought that it really captures what Thai cuisine is all about. It's got the sweet, salty, sour, spicy balance that Thai cuisine is famous for. It's got the aromomas of all the iconic herbs of Thai cuisine. It makes you sweat. It makes you smile. It is basically Thailand in a bowl. Now, my toyamong recipe has been a hot Thai kitchen from day one. And today I am so excited to give it an update, a 4K faceelift with
new tips and tricks to make it even better. And at the end, I will also show you how to eat tomkung like a Thai. And in case you're not familiar, toam is a spicy and sour soup that is common all over Thailand. People make it at home. You can find it in restaurants. We even have all kinds of tom flavored snacks you can find at 7-Eleven. I mean to yam is a flavor that Thai people absolutely love. You can make tom yam with all kinds of protein and I have many kinds of toyam on the website if you want to check them out. But no question the number one most popular kind of toyam is to yam kung or tom yam with shrimp. And let's get started with set shrimp. I'm going to start by making a shrimp stock.
And using shrimp stock will maximize the shrimpy flavor of the soup. If you prefer something a little more neutral, a little less shrimpy, you can use a good unsalted chicken stock instead. Either case though, you need a good stock as the base because your soup will really be as good as the quality of your stock. If you're going to go ahead and use shrimp stock, then what you're going to need is shell on, head on shrimp, which you can get at most Asian markets. If you can't get head-on, at the very least, shell on will also work. And this is how you make a shrimp stock. Remove the head by giving it a twist and then add that to a stockp. And now I'm going
to show you how to peel de vain and butterfly the shrimp all in one go. With scissors, ideally pointy, insert it into the middle of the shrimp. And then you can just cut the shell all the way through to the end. Peel the shell off and add that to the stockp as well. The back will now be butterfied in the process. So all you need to do is remove the veins. Usually, I do this over the sink so I can just rinse off the veins from my hand. Butterflying makes the shrimp look prettier when cooked and reduce their cooking time. But if you don't want to butterfly them, you can just peel them as per usual and then use my satisfying toothpick trick to de vain them. And I'll link to that video with
that trick in the description below. With all of our shells and heads in a pot, we're going to head to the stove. I'm going to add a little bit of oil. And then as an option, you can add some finely chopped daicon and or onion, which will add natural sweetness to the broth. Sauté this on mediumigh heat. And as you go, just press on the shrimp heads to get the tamalei to come out because that is the tasty part. Tamalei is what we call shrimp fat in Thai. I call it shrimp fuagra. And it's going to add a lot of shrimpy flavor to the broth. Once you start to see the bottom of the pot start to brown and it should smell amazing at this point, you add the water before the stuff that sticks
burns. Bring the water to a boil and then let it simmer for 5 minutes, which is all it takes to get good flavor out of shrimp shells. When you're done, scoop out the shells and discard the bits of veggies. You don't have to scoop that out. They're delicious. You can leave them in there. And then I'm going to measure the amount of stock that I have because you want to end up with about four cups of stock. If you have a little bit more, it's fine, but if you have less, just add a little more water to make up the shortfall. Starting with a precise amount of stock will make the seasoning stage easier for you. And now for the three most important ingredients, the herbs responsible for
Tomyam's iconic flavor, lemongrass, galangal, and makrut lime leaves, which I also call the tomium trinity. Now, you do need all three for the complete flavor of thumb, okay? You can't just have two. Lemongrass has a lemony aroma, but not at all fruity like a lemon. It's more grassy. Galangal has a cooling sort of pine foresty aroma. Not at all similar to ginger and cannot be substituted with ginger. If someone tells you otherwise, please walk away from them. Then finally, makrut lime leaves are the flavor, the aroma is reminiscent of lime zest, but again less fruity and more herbaceious. And to get an FAQ out of the way, no, you cannot use regular lime leaves or lemon leaves instead. They're not aromatic, so you
have to use mcgroot lime leaves for this. Now, if you can get them all fresh, great. But frozen is also totally fine. And in the written recipe post, I'll include further information about where to buy them, how to store them, and substitutes and so on and so forth. All right, let's get prepping. First, the lemongrass. I'm only going to use the bottom half for this recipe because that's where the flavor is most concentrated. I'm going to cut off the root end and then smash it either with the back of your knife or even better a pestle to open up the cells so the aromomas can come out. And then cut it into big chunks.
Now, the top half has weaker flavor, so you can discard it if you want, or you can remove the dry bits and freeze the rest for making stock. If you have no use for them, you can also just throw them into the soup as a bonus. For the mcgroot lime leaves, all you need to do is grab them in your hands and twist and tear them into chunks to bruise the leaves and release the aroma. And then you can also move any large center ribs. Now for our last herb, the galangal. Now, usually I have a fresh one to show you, but I couldn't find a fresh one anywhere. So, I thought I would show you what to do if all you can find is a frozen whole galangal. This is something
I normally avoid because when it's frozen solids, it's impossible to cut. It's really hard and then if you let it thaw, it can turn mushy and then it leaks out all the flavorful juices and it just turns chewy and messy. But a Patreon member in our Discord shared a tip that what he does is you let it partially thaw for this size about 10 to 15 minutes. It's going to depend on the thickness obviously and then it's kind of you know once it's partially thaw you can slice it relatively easily without losing juices. You want to put the slices in a bowl immediately because it'll continue to thaw. And then you can put the rest in the freezer or you can just slice everything and then
um freeze the slices for next time. And I'll include information on how to freeze the slices in the blog post linked below. But as you can see here, it is pretty easy. And as you get further in, it becomes a little harder because it's more frozen solid in the middle. So, you know, it is not ideal. But if this is all you've got to work with, it's still it still works. And then of course you can go from either end, you know, okay, like it's getting a little hard on that side. Let's work on this side. And then you can just work your way in through the middle. Right? This is a little bit harder cuz it's thicker. But it works. That's enough. That's all I need. And by the way, this recipe being one of the most popular Thai
recipes is of course a part of my new ebook which has 25 of the most popular classic Thai recipes. I wanted to make this the easiest way, most convenient way for you to cook from my recipes without having to go online and without any ads. And each recipe is linked directly to my YouTube video tutorial. So you don't have to go searching if you need it. So check it out at the link below and thank you in advance for your support of Hot Thai Kitchen. All right, let's make the soup. So, I've got my shrimp stock here, which I'm bringing to a boil or whatever stock you're using, chicken stock, by the way. You can also just use neutral flavored pork stock, even fish stock will work, whatever kind
of stock that you prefer for this. Okay. Um, now, in addition to our three toyam trinity, you also need some chilies. So, I've got here some Thai chilies that I've pounded into a morton pestle because I don't want any big chunks that people will accidentally eat. This is supposed to be a spicy soup, so add as much as you want. But if you can't eat super spicy, one chili is also fine. Make it a little bit spicy. Okay, stock is boiling now. Our tomium trinity goes in. And then the chilies. Oh, the seeds.
Very important point. The herbs in this form, the lemongrass, galanga, and lime leaves are not supposed to be eaten in this chunky form. They're way too chewy, way too tough. They're added for infusion purposes only. In Thailand, we leave them in because they look nice and we all know not to eat them. But if you're serving non- Thai guests, they definitely will not well, they most likely will not know that these things are not supposed to be eaten, and they will probably try to eat them. and it's going to be awkward and embarrassing. So, either you tell them or you remove the herbs before serving. And if you're going to do that, it's easier to wrap them all in a cheesecloth so you can
move everything all together at the end. Okay. Now, I'm also going to add mushrooms. So, in Thailand, oyster mushrooms or straw mushrooms are typical. I'm emotionally attached to oyster mushrooms because that's the mushrooms used in the toyam that I ate growing up as a kid. So, that's what I'm going to add. In that goes. And then the mushrooms can cook alongside the herbs because mushrooms don't overcook. So they can be there as long as we need them to be. And we'll let the herbs simmer for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, let's talk seasoning. Seasonings. We've got salty, sour, and sweet. Salty is coming from fish sauce. Sour is coming from fresh lime juice. And sweet is going to be a combination between sugar and Thai chili
paste. Or nump pao comes in a jar like this. Now, it's very important in toyamong because like it's it's going to add a very unique sort of sweet savory flavor that you associate to yamong with. Having said that, toyam kung or tom with shrimp is the only kind of tom that uses namri pa. Okay, if you're making tomium chicken, tom fish, anything else, we do not add it cuz this is also kind of a shrimpy flavored ingredient. If you don't have it, you still can make a toyam gung without it. It will taste quite different, but it'll still be fine. It'll be like, you know, you making a toyam chicken, but with shrimp as the protein instead. So, I'll include modifications in the written
recipe. The chili paste before we add it to the soup, it's very thick and it's hard to mix into the soup. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add some of our broth and loosen the chili paste so that when we add it, it mixes easier. If you just spoon the chili paste directly into the soup, then it'll take forever for you to try to dissolve it. There we go. And that's that. All right, it's been 5 minutes. It's smelling really good now. I'm going to now season our soup with first fish sauce and then the nump pao. I am not adding the sugar yet because some brands of nump pao like this one I find is very sweet and sometimes you really don't need any more. Um so I'll leave that for final
adjustments. And the lime juice is also going to go at the end when we're done because we don't want to cook the lime juice to retain the best flavor. Now I'm going to turn this up on high now to bring it back to a boil so that we can add our kungs. It's boiling now. The kungs now go in. And these take so little time. Like even though these are quite big, it will take like 30 seconds of being in the heat and then I can turn off the heat and the residual heat will keep the shrimp cooking. You do not want to overcook shrimp, especially I'm using this cast iron pot. It retains heat for so long. So you got to kind of factor all these things in. So 30 seconds in the broth.
It's going to be halfway done and we turn it off and it will finish cooking with the heat off. By the way, if you This is a light soup, right? But if you prefer a richer, creamier to yam, I do have a tom, which is the creamy version of tom yam, you can check that out below. I really, really like that one as well. So, it's kind of a toss up which one is better. You should definitely check out both. Okay. Let's turn this off. The gongs look good. I'm going to now go in with the lime juice. This looks like a lot of lime juice. And it might freak you out like, whoa, that's a lot. But this is a soup that should lead with sour. This should be the main flavor. If
it's leading with salty, if it's leading with sweet, that is not the right toam flavor profile. Okay. And you add it. And it just smells correct. Time to taste. And then we'll see if we need to add that little bit of sugar. Oh man, I'm going to cry. It's perfect. I don't need that sugar because this brand of numpy pow is quite sweet, but you might. Okay. So, when you taste, does it lead with sour? It should. And is the sweet just there to balance? Like if it if you taste in it, it feels like, oh, that's like way it's too sour. The sourness is too sharp. You probably need that little bit of sugar to help soften the edge. Also,
tom is a soup that's supposed to be eaten with rice, so it should taste stronger on its own. Like this is not a soup that you'll like sit with a bowl of and just eat on its own. But if that's what you're going to do with it, then you might need to thin it out with some hot water. So if it feels just overall too strong, you can dilute it with hot water. So the seasoning stage is very, very important. I'm going to finish it off with some chopped cilantro. If you don't like cilantro, you can also do green onions. And by the way, I get a lot of questions about tomatoes. Like, oh, don't you put tomatoes? You can put tomatoes. Tomatoes is one of those like optional ingredient that some people
add, some people don't add. So, if you want tomatoes in your soup, you can add tomatoes. I would add it with the shrimp um so they don't completely disintegrate. All right, let me now show you what a lot of people don't know, and that is how to eat a toyam soup like a Thai. In Thailand, we do not serve things in courses. Everything is served all together family style. So, you never have a Thai soup on its own. And if you've ever been to a Thai restaurant and they bring you your soup as its own course before the rest of the meal, know that they're only doing that because that's what a Western clientele would expect. And they don't have time to be teaching you how to eat Thai soup like a
Thai. And guess what? I have time to teach you how to eat Thai soup like a Thai. So that's what I'm going to do. Uh, by the way, noodle soups is a separate discussion. It's not part of a family style meal. That's a one dish meal. So, we're only talking about soups with no noodles in them. Okay. So, a typical Thai meal, you would not have to yam by itself. It's usually one of a few things on the table. It could be as simple as a Thai omelette. And in fact, if you're going to make one thing to go with your toyam, highly recommend it to be a Thai omelette. It is a match made in heaven. I have a recipe I'll link to below. You might also have a simple vegetable stir fry like this cabbage
fish sauce stir fry. Um, but it could really be any number of things and tom would be one of the things. You will always have rice in front of you and everything is served with rice. So your toyam will be in a small personal soup bowl and it comes from like a big bowl in the center and you can start with your toam cuz it's always nice to start with soup and then you'd go and you'd have couple of bites of everything else. So, you want to have some omelette, take a bite of the omelette by itself, or you can, which is what I love to do, pour a little to yam broth on your omelette and your rice. This is why I love to have these two together. It's so yummy. And then you can have some cabbage. go
back to the soup to wash everything down and then you just, you know, rotate. Or you can also, if you want, put a little bit of rice in the soup bowl itself. You can do that and then you eat it sort of like a rice soup. And this is why we flavor tomium to be quite strong because rarely is it just like a bowl of it on its own, right? That's good, too. So, lots of different ways to do it. You can also, if you want to turn this into a one dish meal, make some tomium, put some rice noodles into it, and then eat it like a rice noodle soup. You can do that, too. Since it's here, let me just have some cabbage fish sauce stir fry, aka the most delicious cabbage in the world. That is from turning it off before it's fully cooked. Man, this is like being in
Thailand. This is exactly the kind of thing you'd have at home. Everything is very simple but all work together so incredibly well. And that is it. And now the next time you go to a Thai restaurant, you can ask for your soup to be brought out with your meal because you now know how to eat it like a Thai. The recipe, as always, will be on hottaiikitchen.com along with all the questions that you might have that I didn't answer in this video. So definitely check that out in the description below. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. And thank you as always for watching. And I will see you next time.
