10:03
Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. So, I've been making Thai curries since I was 9 years old and I never use recipes. Now, I'm not special. Most Thai people make Thai curries without using recipes. And we can do that because we understand how Thai curries are made in general. Whereas for a lot of people who are new to Thai cooking, they approach Thai curry making one recipe at a time without learning the underlying concepts and techniques that apply to pretty much all of them. But once you learn those techniques, you can pretty much make any kind of curries you want without having to follow recipes to a tea. You will also realize that Thai curries are actually really easy and incredibly
versatile. You can be creative with it. you can come up with your own combinations and just have more fun with it in general. So, that's what I'm going to share with you today. The foundational principles of Thai curry making so you can make Thai curries like a Thai. Now, if this sounds like something you're going to enjoy, you're going to love my newly updated 10th anniversary edition of my first book, Hot Thai Kitchen. It is available to order now and I will tell you more about it in a little bit. But for now, let me tell you the plan for today's curry master class. First, I'm going to define what a Thai curry is exactly. Then we will go over the structure of Thai curries and some common ingredients. And
then I will do a couple of demos going over the general procedures for Thai curry making. Let's get started. First, we have to define what a Thai curry is because it's not always what people think it is. So, a curry in Thai is loosely referred to as a gang. And I say loosely because some of our curries many people will look at and think that looks more like a soup, not a curry. So the western concept of a curry is something that's rich and thick and loaded with lots of spices which indeed some Thai curries are like that. But we also have a lot of curries that are light and brothy and very much soupy looking. So what makes a soupy stewy dish considered a gang in Thai cuisine is this. It must
get its flavor from a curry paste. Which leads me to our next topic and that is the structure of a Thai curry. And this is the important mindset shift here because once you start seeing Thai curries in terms of its basic structure rather than as being separate recipes, that's when you can start making Thai curries without recipes. So Thai curries are made up of four major components. the curry paste, the liquid, the nuggets, and the seasoning. The first component is the curry paste. And in Thai, that's called prick gang. Prick means chilies and gang means curry. And as I said, this is the defining feature of a Thai gang. Now, a curry paste is simply a mixture of groundup herbs and
spices. Often the identity of the curry is tied to what curry paste is being used. If you want to make a green curry, you have to use a green curry paste. If you want to make a yellow curry, you have to make a yellow curry paste. So on and so forth. But for some curry paste, it's a little more versatile and it gets used in a lot of different dishes. And red curry paste is one such paste. It's considered a basic paste in Thai cooking and we use this in a lot of different dishes. So what goes into a curry paste? Well, obviously different paste going to use different ingredients, but there are some common ones. So here are four that are common to basically all curry paste.
Garlic, shallots, fermented shrimp paste and some sort of peppers which is the prick in prick gang which of course is the most important part. Now most commonly this is dried red chilies but it can also be fresh chilies, green chilies and even peppercorns. Beyond these, there are some herbs that are not used in all paste but do show up quite often. And these are lemongrass, galangal, makroot lime zest, which I don't have, so I'm using the lime leaves as a visual standin, but they do have basically the same flavor, and also cilantro roots or stems. Finally, there are some ingredients that do show up less frequently and these are ginger, turmeric, finger root okra chai, and dry spices.
So, the first thing you need to do when you're making a Thai curry is to actually pick the curry paste because that will dictate the flavor of profile of your dish. Now, most of the time, storebought curry paste is just fine as long as you are using a good quality brand. And I will talk more in a blog post about which ones are good and which ones are not. But if you can get the ingredients and you're feeling gung-ho and you want to do it all yourself, I will also link to my tutorial on how to make your own curry paste below. The second component of a Thai curry is the liquid. Now, Thai curries can be either coconut milk based or waterbased, which means you really only have two liquid
options. You can use coconut milk or water. But under the umbrella of water, I'm also including stock, which I generally prefer because it is the more flavorful version of water. Coconut milk being a highfat creamy liquid is obviously going to produce a richer, creamier curry. But in Thai cuisine, we rarely use all coconut milk in a curry because you may have noticed that Thai food in general is not a heavy rich cuisine. So, we like to cut the richness with some water or stock. However, if you want to do an ultra rich curry and you want to go all coconut milk, that's totally fine. Just because it's not done in Thailand doesn't mean you can't do it in your kitchen, and it's not wrong.
Water-based curries, on the other hand, don't use any coconut milk, okay? They use only uh stock or water. And for the stock, this will most commonly be pork stock or chicken stock, but you can also do fish stock, beef stock, whatever. Now, these are the soupy looking curries that I was talking about earlier. And overseas in Thai restaurants, water-based curries are not popular at all. You might have never seen one, even if you've been to 10 different restaurants. But in Thailand, they are actually really, really popular. A very common part of our diet. So, here are some of my water-based curry recipes that you can check out if you are curious. Jungle curry, sour curry, and namo, which is a curry noodle dish. Once
you've picked your curry paste, you've chosen your liquids, now it's time to pick our third component, which are what I call the nuggets, which is a term that I came up with, for lack of a better word for all the bits in your curry. You know, the protein, the vegetables, any big pieces of herbs. And here you really have kind of a free reign. You can use anything. Um for protein, anything works. Chicken, pork, beef, shrimp, fish, tofu, you name it. It can go into your curry. Now, you can also add any vegetables. And these are just some of vegetables that I'm going to use in our demo a little bit later. However, in Thailand, we don't put any and every vegetable into curries. We tend to stick
to a group of tried and trueue curry vegetables. For example, uh Thai eggplant, pea eggplant, kabocha squash or pumpkin, uh long beans, winter melons. These are just some examples. But in your own kitchen, if you want to add non- Thai vegetables, like if you want to put broccoli and zucchini in your curry, you can go ahead and do that. I don't personally like broccoli or zucchini in my curry, but hey, it's your kitchen. You're the chef. And finally, the big pieces of herbs. Now, this is definitely not necessary, but sometimes in addition to the herbs ground up into the curry paste, we like to add visible herbs into the curry cuz it looks nice, right? Um, so this is most commonly going to be Thai basil,
makut lime leaves, or julian gray. You might think that cilantro is something that we would put into a curry because we sprinkle cilantro leaves onto like a million things, but interestingly, we don't put cilantro into Thai curries. Um, you can if you want to. I'm just letting you know that it's not done. Finally, the last component of a Thai curry is the seasoning. And this is super simple. The standard salting agent for basically all Thai curries is fish sauce. We don't use soy sauce or oyster sauce or anything else salty that you've seen me use in things like stir fries for example. Now, however, in the curry paste, there's usually already salt and the fermented shrimp paste is also quite
salty already. But in terms of what you add while you're making the curry, 99% of the time it's just fish sauce. And then we always add a little bit of sweetness to balance out the saltiness. And this usually comes in the form of either palm sugar or just simply white sugar. But, and this is a big butt, Thai curries should never be sweeter than it is salty. Okay? Despite whatever you've had in Thai restaurants, which tend to oversweeten things. Know that a wellbalanced Thai curry should not lead with sweetness. It should only be balanced by sweetness. Finally, acid. Not all, but some curries also have an element of acid. And this is usually going to come in the form of tamarind
paste, especially for coconut milk based curries, because tamarind just holds up better to cooking than lime. But occasionally, I do see lime being used in some water-based curries. And that's the structure of a Thai curry. The paste, the liquid, the nuggets, the seasoning. All of my curry recipes follow this basic structure. And once you get comfortable with this idea, you'll be able to make your own Thai curry without relying on recipes. And now is a good time for us to talk about traditional or authentic recipes. Because at this point, you might be thinking, wait, so if I just pick any paste, any liquid, put it with any meat, any vegetables, I can just make my own mix and match Thai curry. Well, yes, in
theory, but let me give you my thoughts on this. In Thailand, there are traditional combinations that are commonly done. And then there are combinations that you will never find for one reason or another. And the great thing about traditional recipes is that they are a combination that we know work. They are tried and true. They are definitely going to be delicious. For example, if you're going to make a green curry, we know that if you put winter melon or Thai eggplant in it, that's a great combination. and it just helps to take the guesswork out of making a delicious meal. There are also some cultural or historical reasons for certain ingredient choices. For example, in Thailand, you will rarely find masaman curry made with pork because
this is originally a Muslim dish. So, traditional recipes are the way they are for a reason. But in your own kitchen, my general take is that you should be free to experiment. Maybe you don't have access to Thai eggplants for your green curry and you want to try mushrooms instead. Fine, you should try that. Maybe you want to try what cauliflower will be like in a masaman curry. You should go ahead and try that. It may or may not be good, but that's the spirit of an experiment. Of course, if you do something like that, at some point, you just can't call it a Thai masaman curry anymore, right? You're making a curry of your own creation using a Masaman curry paste as a base and that is great. We
can respect the tradition and the culture behind the cuisine and have the freedom to experiment at the same time. All right, so we are now ready to put all that theory into practice and move on to the general procedure for making a Thai curry. Now, there are two general methods for making a Thai curry. The first is what I call the sauté the paste method because you have to sauté the paste. And then the second is the no sauté method. And the first method is probably the one most of you are looking for because this is the method that's used for all the popular coconut milk based curries. Your green curry, your red curry, yellow, masaman, panang and all that. So let's get into it. So step
one is to sauté the curry paste. Now, why do we need to sauté the curry paste? When the curry paste is going to be cooking in the liquid anyway, and it's because when you boil the curry paste, the temperature can only get as high as the boiling temperature of water, right? But when you sauté the paste, the temperature can go much higher and that enhances the flavor of all the herbs and spices that are in there. So, you can think about the difference between boiled onions and fried onions, right? The flavors are just not the same. So you can sauté the paste using oil. U that would be very straightforward and that's what you would do if you were making a water-based curry. But if you're making a coconut milk-based
curry, we traditionally we saute the curry paste in reduced coconut milk. So I've got some my coconut milk here. I'm going to add about a third of it. And this does not have to be precise, but I'm going to add roughly a third of my coconut milk and bring it to a full boil. All right. So, my coconut milk is really boiling now. And at this point, heat can be high or it doesn't matter what the heat is right now. But once you add the curry paste, then you want to turn the heat down so it's about medium because curry paste can burn quite easily. And I'm going to loosen the paste. Oh, by the way, I don't think I mentioned I am making a red curry with chicken and kabosha squash, which is one of my
classic uh favorite recipes. And the written recipe for this I will link to below. But you want to get rid of all the lumps of the curry paste. We have a lot of liquid now. So the heat can be high. But once it starts to dry, that's when you really want to watch your heat. Okay. So it's starting to really splatter. Now I'm going to turn the heat down and then keep stirring it until it's very thick. And I start to see coconut oil separating from the paste. And the coconut oil separation is going to happen probably within five minutes of you adding the curry paste. And when you stop stirring, you'll start to see all that like around where the bubbles are. You can see clear red oil clearly sort of slowly surfacing to the
top. That is what we're going for. And the separation of coconut oil is our sign that the curry paste is no longer just boiling away and it's actually like frying in the coconut milk. So um don't move on at the first sign of separation. Like give it a minute to really let that oil separate out before moving on. M and I love this step. It is so satisfying when this happens. You can stir it once in a while, but when you stir it, you'll notice that the oil gets stirred back in. But then once it's already separated, if you stop stirring very quickly, the oil will come out again. So don't freak out and think that like, oh no, I've unseparated the oil.
It's like, no, it's fine. Like once you see the oil separate, you're good. All right. So once it's separated for about 30 seconds or a minute or so, you're ready to move on. But I want to show you a different way that you can do this. So, this alternate method for sautéing the curry paste is the one that I used in recipes in the first edition of my book. And so, I just wanted to show you so you're not confused if you're seeing two different methods in different places. Um, so in this method, you would reduce the coconut milk until it separates before adding the curry paste. So, here I've got some here that I've already reduced and separated. And you can see sort of clear coconut oil
separating and floating at the top, especially around where the bubbles are. So once your coconut milk looks like this, you would add your curry paste, sauté it for about 3 minutes, and then move on with the recipe as per usual. This is actually the traditional way that Thai people make curries. We let coconut milk separate and then saute the paste. However, the reason I switched to the other method, at first I was just adding curry paste earlier because I was just being impatient. I didn't want to wait for the coconut milk to separate. But I found that it's actually easier to see the separation once the paste is in it. And because this is white on white, right? And if you're not if you don't
know what you're looking for, it can be really hard to see like has the oil separated. This is quite obvious because there's a lot of oil here. But sometimes it's not quite as obvious if your coconut milk doesn't have as much fat in it. And so it can be difficult to determine when the separation happens. And also commercial coconut milk tends to take much longer to separate than freshlymade coconut milk. So this can take quite a while and you're waiting and waiting and then you walk away, it starts to burn. You know, it just I just feel like generally it's more user friendly for you just go ahead and add your paste, wait for it to separate, and then move on. But either way is correct.
So, you can do whichever one you prefer. However, this is a very important caveat here. Some brands of coconut milk just simply will not separate. Okay? It doesn't matter when you add your curry paste, it just won't separate. This is because many brands of coconut milk have been so heavily homogenized. Some even have binders and emulsifiers added in order to prevent this very separation from happening because in all other uses, you don't want your coconut milk to split, right? But when you're making a Thai curry, it's just a very specific situation. So, if you're using this coconut milk, which I've been using and recommending for years, you should have no problems with the separation. But if
you're using anything else and you're, you know, you're waiting and things are going to burn any time now when still no oil is coming out, just blame the coconut milk and move on with the recipe. Your curry will still taste fine. All right, back to our curry. Once your oil separation has occurred or not, you now add the rest of your liquids. So, in my case, it's going to be coconut milk. And as I mentioned earlier, cut with a little bit of stock. This is a pork stock, but chicken stock would be fine. Chicken stock might be better for this because this is a chicken recipe. And now I'm going to just stir and let all of that try to get all the lumps of curry paste dissolved
into the liquid. And at this point, I'm also going to add my seasoning, which is fish sauce. And I'm whatever the recipe says, add only half for now because um your curry paste, your curry paste is salty. You don't know how salty it is. So, just to be safe, just add roughly half of whatever you think it needs in total. If you're winging it, I would just say start with a tablespoon and you should be fine. And also I'm going to add some sugar, palm sugar. And the reason I like to season before I add my meat and vegetables is so that when I do add the meat and vegetables, they have they can absorb that seasoning. If I wait for the very end to do all of the seasoning adjustment, then the meat is
not cooking in as flavorful of a liquid as it could. Right now, if at this point you have any herbs that you want to slowly simmer along with the curry, such as makroot lime leaves, you can throw them in right now. Or maybe you have bay leaves or something, you can add them in right now. I'm just going to twist them to bruise. Add them to the broth. You want to give the liquid a total simmering time of at least five minutes because when you add the coconut milk in the beginning, you'll notice that it actually looks quite pale. Because you can imagine that the curry paste bits are still kind of in separate bits away from the liquid. But you give that time to simmer, they will start to infuse and
integrate into the liquid. And that's how you know when chefs say let the flavors mingle, that's what's happening. the flavors are integrating into each other and you get a more cohesive flavorful dish. So, if let's say you're making a curry and it's a fish curry that takes 2 minutes to cook, you don't want to just add the fish right now because then your curry won't have time to develop that flavor. You want to give it time to simmer and then you can add your protein later. So, step two is liquids and seasoning. Step three is adding your protein, your nuggets, your proteins and your veg. And this is where you really have to use your judgment because you want to stagger at
them according to how long they take to cook so that they will finish cooking at the same time. Okay? So you just look at your ingredients and just think what needs to go in first. In my case, I am using chicken thighs which technically take only a couple of minutes to cook. Let's try to do this so I don't splash curry all over myself. Um, now in my case, I am using bite-sized pieces of chicken thighs, which technically take only like a few minutes to cook through, but I want to actually let these braze to tenderize and also they will have time to absorb the liquid. So, I'm actually going to let this cook for a total of 15 minutes. From experience, I know that takes 15 minutes. My kabocha squash, which is
my vegetable of choice, is going to take about 7 minutes. Also, this is from experience. And if you don't know how long things take to cook, you can do a quick Google of it. Um, so that means that I'm going to add the squash after the chicken has had about 8 minutes. Okay? So, look at your chosen proteins, your chosen vegetables, and you have to kind of do the mental math to figure out when you want to add certain things. If I on the other hand was doing this curry with chicken breast, I do not want to let chicken breast cook for 15 minutes. They're going to be super dry, then I would actually have to add them at the end after the squash has gone in. Right? So, this is something you have to think
about. Now, while this is cooking, I want to address a slightly different technique that you may have seen me use in the past in other recipes and just want to explain it so you're not confused. Sometimes you might have seen me add the meat into the curry paste, mix it up, and then add the liquid. And the reason I do that is just because once I mix the meat with the curry paste, I don't have to worry about lumps of curry paste not dissolving in the liquid. But it really doesn't matter. It's a really minor point. The curry paste will dissolve eventually. But I don't want to teach that as a standard because you can only add the meat that early if the meat will take a long time
to cook. So if you're using a quick cooking protein, I don't want you mixing your shrimp in with the curry paste and now it has to be in the pot for, you know, way longer than it needs, right? So as a standard procedure, you should add your meat after um the liquid. All right, it's been about 8 minutes for our chicken. Time to add our vegetables again without splashing. I love kabotcha squash in curries. One of my favorite curry uh curry vegetables and it works in green curry as well. The skin is edible. That's a big bonus because you don't have to peel it. Now, I have one more vegetable that I'm not going to add yet because it is uh thin slices of bell peppers, which I like to have them still crisp. So, I'm going to
actually leave that until the very end. Even if they're like barely cooked, I'm fine with that. So, the squash will take 7 minutes. My kobocha squash is now done. My chicken is now fork tender. Time to go in with the bell peppers. And I'm actually going to stir them in and turn off the heat and let the residual heat gently heat the peppers through. Never underestimate the power of residual heat, especially in a cast iron pot. Okay, now the next step, where are we at now? Step four is taste and adjust seasoning, which you always want to do because every brand of curry paste is different. um ev how much evaporation you've had is going to be different each
time. How much juices came out of the meat and vegetables. So, you always want to check your seasoning before you finish it. Ooh, it's spicy. I'm going to add a little bit of fish sauce. A little bit more. And that's pretty much it for the seasoning. And the final step, step five, is to add any finishing herbs that uh cannot withstand active cooking. Right? So in our case, it's Thai basil, which I'm just going to again just stir it in and let it wilt using residual heat. And sometimes you don't have step five because you don't have no garnish, no nothing. So you can just be done. And that is it. Look how good that is.
Now, if you've enjoyed what you've learned so far in this video, then I know you're going to love the new Hot Thai Kitchen, which has just been updated and revised for its 10th anniversary. It's been 10 years since this book came out. Can you believe it? Now, if you have the original, then you know that this is just much more than a book of recipes. I wrote this book to be a foundational reference book to help you understand Thai cuisine so you can cook Thai food with more confidence. So, as I just did with breaking down the structure of Thai curries, this book also breaks down the structure of Thai soups, salads, stir fries, talks about Thai desserts, goes into details about ingredients, and more. Now, the original
is still fantastic. I'm still very proud of it. But I've added some new things that I've learned over the past 10 years. I've also added some new photos. And there's also a whole new chapter with recipes that I call house specials. And these are basically recipes that are special and unique to me in some ways. They are recipes that I created for Hot Thai Kitchen the show that became popular with my fans. I added some of that in. Some recipes are special from my childhood, so I added those in. And I'm really excited about this chapter because it kind of commemorates not only 10 years of Hot Thai Kitchen the book, but 16 years of Hot Thai Kitchen, the show that you're watching now. So
whether you've just found me or you've been following along since when this book was new, thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting my work and making Hot Thai Kitchen what it is today. I will put the link to order and also to more information about the book in the description below. All right, this second demo is for the no sauté method, which as the name suggests doesn't require you to sauté the paste and it's super simple and it is mostly used with water-based curries such as sour curry or gang, which is the dish I'm going to demo right now. Um, but it is also sometimes used with coconut milk-based curry such as in kanomya, which is a fish curry noodle dish that is added to the 10th anniversary edition of Hot Thai Kitchen
in the house special section. All right, so step one is bring your liquid of choice to a boil. For our case, because we're making a sour curry, we only need stock or water. For this recipe, I highly recommend a stock because without the help of coconut milk if you only used water, the flavor of the broth will be lackluster. So, this is a good quality um homemade pork stock, but it can be chicken stock, fish stock, really anything you want. All right, my stock is boiling now. I'm going to now add my curry paste, which I made earlier. And sour curry has the simplest curry paste you can imagine. And I just made it in a blender. And the good thing about a no sauté method is that the curry paste can
be super watery cuz you're not going to sauté it. So I just made this in a blender. And it's all good. All right. And now the seasoning. I'm going to add fish sauce. As always, the liquid, by the way, for curry making, I if you're going to use stock, I always encourage uh unsalted or at the very least low sodium stock because if your stock is heavily salted, you can only add but so much fish sauce. And fish sauce brings not only salt, but also a lot of umami and flavor. So, the more room you have for fish sauce, the more umami you can bring to the dish. Now, to balance our saltiness, I'm going to add some palm sugar. And this being a sour curry, we're going to need an element of acid,
which is tamarind paste. There we go. And that's it. You're like halfway done. As with the previous curry, you also want water-based curries to simmer for a minimum of 5 minutes. So, again, you still need to think about, do my ingredients take longer than 5 minutes? because if not, you're going to need to add a little bit more time here. My ingredients are very quick cooking. So, they may not take 5 minutes. So, just to be sure, I'm just going to give it a little just a minute or so to simmer here to make sure that I get all of that mingling that's supposed to happen. By the way, there is a written recipe for sar curry in both editions of Hot Thai Kitchen, the book, and also one um on my
website, hot thaiikitchen.com. All right. So now we are ready to add our protein and veg. And for this I wanted to do something a little more complicated so I can talk you through a more complex you know protein vegetable situation and like when do you add things? Protein. I actually have two different proteins. One is shrimp which is very common for sour curry and the other one is shredded cooked fish. I know this is very strange, but it's actually classic. We take cooked white fish and we pound it in um mortar and pestle and this becomes a bit of a broth thickener. For vegetables, I am using long beans and nappa cabbage and cauliflower. All classic gang vegetables. Now, this is a lot of things. So, here's how I'm looking at
it. The first thing you ask is what does not overcook? Is there anything you're going to put in that can be there for 10-15 minutes and nothing bad will happen to them? And in our case, yes. The shredded fish actually can be in there as long as it needs to be. So that is what is going to go in first. Other ingredients that would fall into the never overcook category are bamboo shoots, mushrooms, any kind of mushrooms and tofu will also not overcook and they will only benefit from a long simmering time in the curry. Okay, so that goes in. So now the next thing you want to ask is what takes the least time to cook and will overcook very quickly. And in
our case that is the shrimp. Shrimp, regardless of size, never take more than just a few minutes. And they do overcook and become rubbery. So, this will be the last thing to go in. I will save for the last moment. And then for our vegetables, I've got three different vegetables. Cauliflower is the one that's going to take the longest, so that's what's going to go in right now. The cauliflower has been in there for a couple minutes. Now, I'm going to add my long beans and nappa cabbage. And I'm adding them at the same time, even though they probably don't take exactly the same time to cook because there's
really no need to get granular about it. Like all of our veggies here, they all have a pretty wide margin of error or wide window of acceptable dness. Meaning, if it's a little under, it's fine. If it's a little over, it's also fine. Like, you don't have to get granular about it. However, for some vegetables like the kabotaa squash in our previous example, undercooked squash is no good and overcooked squash will disintegrate into your curry. So, when you're working with that type of vegetables, then yes, you have to be more specific and precise about their dness. So, I'm going to give these two
more minutes and then we're going to go in with our shrimp. And believe it or not, it's almost done. All right. Now, the vegetables, the long beans I can tell, are close to done, but not quite yet. But it's perfect timing for our shrimp to go in. And sour curry, just as an FYI, is typically seafood based. Like, I'm trying to think if I've ever had like a chicken sour curry, and nothing comes to mind right now. I'm sure it exists somewhere, but it's most commonly a shrimp or fish. Here's a pro tip for cooking shrimp. For any shrimp that's not gigantic, like something this size and below, as soon as the outside looks done, I can turn off the heat and then the residual heat will continue
cooking the shrimp through. Because shrimp are small, they cook quickly. And again, never underestimate the power of residual heat. This is a boiling pot of liquid. you turn off the heat, it will maintain that temperature for a long time before it stops being able to cook anything. Right? So, my rule of thumb is if it looks done, turn it off for shrimp. Shrimp look done. No gray remaining anywhere. I'm going to turn it off and let the residual cooking do the rest. And step four and our final step is taste and adjust the seasoning.
Let's see. I winged this one, so it may have a lot of adjustment to do. Definitely needs more sour. So, I'm going to get my tamarind and add some more tamarind. But at this point, I could very well add lime juice. Um because I actually find the flavor of lime juice in a sour curry quite nice and refreshing and citrusy at the end. But I don't have a lime ready to go right now. So, tamarind it is. That's perfect. So, what you're tasting for is going to differ depending on what curry you're making, obviously. But at this point, you're just thinking, does it need more salt? If it does, add more fish sauce. Is it is the salt unbalanced? Like, it's is it just salty and it doesn't have any sweet? In which case, it sometimes feels
a little sharp. Feels like it's a little too salty. But actually what it needs is a little sugar to balance. In the case of a curry that needs to be acidic, then does it need to be sharper? Does it feel a little dull? Then you add a little more acid to make it sharper. But again, it depends on the curry, the profile you're going for. But in no situation should your curry lead with sweet. That is not a thing that happens in Thai cooking. So, if it leads with sweet, then you're severely lacking in salt and or acid. All right, step five would have normally been our finally finishing touches, delicate herbs, but for this, this is such a rustic dish that there is no garnishes. There's no finishing
touch. This is it in all its glory. And that is it. I hope this video helps you make curries more freely without relying so much on recipes. Now, I want to be clear. Do not get me wrong. Recipes are good. I write recipes for a living. I believe in recipes. They provide guidance, ideas. They give you specific measurements. So, you don't have to be second-guessing anything. And if you are a beginner, recipes is probably where you want to start. But they can also be limiting because they prescribe a specific set of ingredients. And if you don't have those ingredients or you don't like certain things, don't eat certain things, if you understand the underlying principles around making a curry, you can make modifications
successfully and with confidence. So that's what I hope you take away from this video. And again, if you love this video, I know you're going to love this book. There's a reason why it's been going strong for 10 years, and I truly believe it can make you become a more confident Thai cook. And if you've got the original version, I would love to hear what you think down in the comments. A special thanks to all of our Patreon members who help support the show. If you want to know what that's all about, I will put the link to the description below. And thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time.
