Easy Thai Red Curry Sauce

Thai red curry sauce is incredibly easy to make, and extremely tasty and fragrant.

 

Who doesn't love a spicy, warming Thai red curry, with all of the variations you can have, and the complexity of flavour.

 

 

Not only that, if you have Thai red curry paste in your fridge, there all kinds of other things you can make with it, such as Thai fish cakes, or crab cakes.

This quantity of sauce makes around eight portions. If you want to make a smaller amount, and a red duck curry for two, see here for my recipe.

You can either make your  own red curry paste from scratch (my recipe is here and you can freeze it in portions), or you can buy it ready made for convenience - Thai Taste brand - this is my favourite, it lasts for ages in the fridge - affiliate link which won't cost you any extra to purchase, but gives me a few pennies towards my blog as I don't get paid and don't have adverts on it)

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp coconut oil
• 75g red curry paste (e.g. Thai Taste brand)
• 1 x 400g coconut milk
• 4 'double' kaffir / makrut lime leaves
• 20g palm sugar (or soft brown sugar)
• 4 tsp fish sauce

Method

1. Melt the coconut oil in a medium to large pan (non stick is easiest).

2. Add the red curry paste and stir until fragrant.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients, and simmer gently for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionaly, so that the lime leaves can infuse into the sauce, and it can develop. Use with stir fries, or add ingredients to the hot sauce, or use as a sauce on the side. Freezes well. See notes.

Notes

I have got into the habit of very lightly stir-frying vegetables over a very high heat in a wok, so that they retain their crunch, but get a little char flavour (e.g. bite size pieces of onions and peppers, mushrooms, very thinly sliced carrots, short lengths of spring onions) and then cooling down, and adding ingredient such as sliced water chestnuts, sliced bamboo shorts, tinned straw mushrooms etc. then they will keep in the fridge for a few days, and you can take out what you need and add to a portion of sauce (depending how many people you're feeding. So, for example, for Thai red curry, I'd use onions and peppers, sliced water chestnuts, sliced bamboo shorts, three or four small cherry tomatoes per portion, a few pineapple chunks and about five light red grapes per portion. Then add your protein of choice, such as sliced duck, chicken, king prawns etc. If you can get hold of Thai basil, scatter a little on top when you serve it. Serve with jasmine rice or sticky rice (see here for how to cook Thai sticky rice perfectly).