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Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. So, this is what we are making today. It is a Thai noodle dish you probably don't know but totally should. It is called Kumji Namo or just Namo for short. And it is an iconic dish of northern Thailand. Now, before we make it, let me just show you how good it is. We have got rice noodles here. And then we're going to pour this beautiful rich and umami pork and tomato broth right over it. It is not done because this is Thai food. We got toppings. Some bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, cilantro, fried garlic, and a squeeze of lime. I am telling you, there is no other Thai dish that tastes like this. This is a truly unique
experience that you've got to try. Unbelievable. Very few of you will have had this dish before. And even I have never had this dish until recently when Chef Hong Tai, my Subai Talk podcast co-host, made it for me. She's from the north and this is her signature dish. And I mean, I was instantly hooked. I mean, I went back for a third and that is something I don't usually do. And now I'm on a mission to spread the word because I truly think this is a dish that deserves to be more known. Now, it is technically a curry, but as you can see, it's very light because it's a water-based curry. So, this is something you can keep going, you know, and going. It's very easy to eat like three bowls of this. Um, and it
is very hard to find even in restaurants in Thailand. like you have to be in northern Thailand to find it. But thankfully, this is something that's not too hard to make at home. It just takes a bit of time. So now, let me show you how I just made this meal. First thing, we got to start with some Asian style cut pork ribs. Mine comes in a long strip like this, so I need to cut between the bones to separate them. I prefer back ribs for this cuz the pieces are more consistent in size, but spare ribs will also work. If you can't find Asian style cut ribs, uncut back ribs will also work, but they'll have less exposed bones, which won't produce as rich of a broth. But you got to do what
you got to do. The ribs go into a big pot and then I'm going to cover them with pork or chicken stock, unsalted, so we can make a double strength broth. More on this in a bit. Then season it with fish sauce and just a touch of sugar to balance and bring that to a gentle simmer. And we're going to let that go while we make the curry paste. We will start with mild dried chilies. I'm using wajillo here. And if you want to make it spicy, you can add a few smaller spicier chilies to taste. Cut them into small pieces. Then we're going to blitz it into a powder in a coffee grinder and set that aside.
In a glass measuring cup, I'm going to add chopped lemongrass, galangal, cilantro roots or stems, garlic, shallots, fermented shrimp paste, and Thai fermented soybean paste or miso. Now, I'm going to use an immersion blender to make my curry paste to make quick work of this, but you can also hand pound it old school. Blend it all together until fine, and you'll probably need to scrape it once in between. And then add the chilies and blend it just to mix everything together. And that is it. Once you have your curry paste, we're going to sauté it in just a bit of neutral oil for a few minutes to cook off all the herbs. Then in goes
some ground pork. And we're going to cook the ground pork with the curry paste until the pork is no longer clumpy. You can theoretically add the ground pork directly into the broth, but then it would be harder to break up the clumps and you'd probably get a bunch of small meatballs instead. So, this is a neat trick. All right, a couple of things. The fermented soybean paste that I used in the curry paste comes in a bottle like this. This is what we call tao. And I'm actually using it as a substitute. The traditional ingredient is fermented soybean crackers called tuano. and it's added to boost the umami of the dish. It's an ingredient that's unique to northern Thailand. I can't
find it here, so this works. And you can also use miso paste as well. The second thing is my trick for this dish is that instead of simmering the ribs in water, I am simmering the ribs in stock, making a double strength stock at the end. And the reason I do it this way is I find that for a water-based curry that is going to be poured over noodles when serving, if you don't have a strong stock base, it can feel a little bit watery. So water is fine in a pinch, but if you are using the fulllength ribs that are not cut, those don't produce a strong stock on their own to begin with. So, in that case, I definitely recommend doubling up the stock to ensure that you've got the richest fullbodied broth
possible. So, the ribs have been simmering for about 45 minutes by this point, and we're going to now add the ground pork and curry paste mixture in and let everything finish simmering together. Try not to splash yourself with hot broth. This will simmer for another 45 minutes for a total of 1 and 1/2 hours. Okay. However, if you were super efficient and you have your ground pork and curry paste done early before 45 minutes, you can just go ahead and add it in whenever you're done with it. The point is you want the ribs and the curry paste and the ground pork to have at least 45 minutes to simmer together so the flavors can mingle. While we wait for the broth, let's talk through two
more ingredients. Cherry or grape tomatoes. Super important in this dish. It'll add pops of acidity and even more umami. I find that sour tomatoes work better in this dish because of that acidity, but you know, whatever you have will work. And optionally, optionally, we're also going to add what I used to think was chocolate tofu when I was a kid, but in fact, it is blood tofu. Now, for some of you, you know it, you love it. I don't need to sell this to you, but if you're unfamiliar, let me try to sell this to you. So, this is either pork or chicken blood that has been steamed. It has a texture that's very similar to tofu. And it comes in a block and all you have to do is chop it into
cubes just like tofu. And like tofu, it doesn't actually have much of a flavor in itself. But when it gets to simmer in a flavorful broth, it has the ability to absorb a lot of that flavor and become super tasty. It is super nutritious, high in protein, super high in iron. And in this dish, it does add a textural variety that I think is quite lovely. So, I encourage you to give it a try. Lots of people love it for a reason. But if this is not available or you don't want to go there, but you like liver, Chef Hong suggests adding liver instead of the blood also works really well in this dish. Chicken or pork liver will
work just fine. All right, look at this. It has been simmering now for an hour and a half and then we're going to finish it off with our blood tofu without splashing myself. Ah, okay. And the blood tofu is already cooked. Okay. So, they just need to heat up. And then, of course, the tomatoes, which I have. And the tomatoes just need 3 to four minutes to cook. You want them soft and luscious, but you want them still intact. And then it's done. Now, there's one more ingredient you need to we need to talk about because some will claim that it is critical to the dish, but I disagree. But, so I'm not adding it, but we need to talk about it anyway because it's super iconic. It is docu. Now, do
is the dried core of the flowers of the red cotton tree and they're super hard to find outside of northern Thailand. So, I omit them. Chef Hong also omits them because they don't really add any flavor to the dish. They just add kind of like a fibrous texture. So, I don't want you to go out of your way to look for it. But if you're having numo in Thailand and you see some weird stringy looking thing floating around your soup, that's what it is. All right, tomatoes are soft. I'm going to turn this off. Very important. You need to taste and adjust the seasoning. This is a thing that's been simmering for two hours. You don't know what's went on in there during the past two hours. You need to
taste and check the seasoning. And you want to make sure the seasoning is stronger than you think it needs to be because remember, we're going to pour these over noodles that have no flavor. So, it will get diluted quite a bit. So, at this stage, you want it to be strong. Okay. That's good. But it does need fish sauce. Like it's I can eat this right now as a bowl of soup, which you can also do. I've been known to do that. But if we're going to put um this over noodles, you definitely I definitely need more fish sauce. You can also add more toio if you want. You can just simply add salt. Whatever.
Whatever you need to add. All right. And now all we have to do is cook the noodles. The noodles we need is komin, which are these Vietnamese rice vermicelli. I like to soak them in water first until they're pliable. Takes about an hour or so, so they take less time to cook, but you can boil them straight from dry. Timing depends on the size. They can take anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes if you cook them from dry. So, keep checking. And you want them tender with a little bit of chew. Once they're done, fish them out and directly into a bowl of cold water to stop them from cooking. Now, if you want to serve them Tai style, you can pick them up with your fingers and then coil them into a cute little bundle like
this. But if you're just trying to get dinner on the table, just drain them and separate into serving bowls and you're ready to eat. And now we're ready to put it all together. We've got our noodles here in the bowl. We're going to pour our beautiful numo over the noodles. Make sure you get a little bit of everything. And now, optionally, we've got some toppings. Pickled mustard greens, which I highly recommend. Cilantro, green onions, if you want, some fried garlic, and of course, this is a Thai noodle soup. We need some bean sprouts for that extra crunch, and a wedge of lime for that zing. And it's done. And that, my friends, is how you make
komi namo. Now, a few tips. The biggest tip that Chef Hong wanted me to pass on to you is that this is a dish that tastes much better the next day once all the flavors have had time to mingle. If you use the blood, the blood especially will taste much better tomorrow. So, this is something I recommend you make on the weekend when you've got time and then have it throughout the week. This will easily keep in the fridge for the whole week. Um, the curry paste, like with any curry paste, can be made in bulk, in advance, and frozen. And finally, the noodles for this dish in Thailand, is served at room temperature, and the sauce is hot. So, together, the dish is warm. If you're the kind of
person who loves things to be piping hot, you might want to microwave your noodles first so they're hot before putting the sauce on. And that is it. Let me take another bite before I say goodbye because I've been sitting here and just dying to have another bite with that blood especially that I've been talking so much about. So good. The ultimate comfort food really. Like even if you just have a bowl of it like soup, like sometimes I ran out of noodles, I didn't want to cook another batch. I was just so happy with a bowl of it. You can just put rice in it. Have it with some toast. I've done that, too. I mean, it is just so
good. The recipe, as always, will be on hot thaiikitchen.com. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. And if you want to know what that's all about and how you can get in touch with me directly through our private Discord, check out the link in the description below. Thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time.
