Tom kha kai
An opaque coconut soup where galangal is the loudest thing in it and nothing ever boils.
Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, chicken stock, fish sauce.
Ingredients
- 600 g chicken thighs, in thin slices
- 600 ml coconut milk
- 300 ml chicken stock
- 80 g galangal, in thin coins
- 3 lemongrass stalks, bruised and cut in lengths
- 8 kaffir lime leaves, torn
- 200 g oyster mushrooms, torn
- 4 tablespoons fish sauce
- 4 tablespoons lime juice
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar
- 6 bird's eye chillies, bruised
- 1 bunch coriander
Method
- GALANGAL IS THE LOUDEST THING IN IT, and 80 g is not a misprint. Where the tom yam on this site uses it as one aromatic among several, here it should be the first thing you taste and the thing you are still tasting afterwards. Ginger is not a substitute: it is a different root, hotter and sweeter, and it makes a different soup.
- Slice it in thin coins across the grain. It is woody and stays woody, so it is lifted out rather than eaten, and thin coins give up far more in twenty minutes than thick ones do.
- NOTHING EVER BOILS. Coconut milk held at a bare shiver stays white and smooth; let it roll even briefly and it splits into oil and grains. There is no step in this recipe that wants more than the faintest movement on the surface.
- Stock and 300 ml of the coconut milk in the pan with the galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves. Bring it slowly to a shiver and hold it 15 minutes.
- Chicken in, 6 minutes, until just cooked through.
- Mushrooms in, 3 minutes.
- Remaining 300 ml of coconut milk in and brought back to a shiver only. Adding it in two stages keeps the finished soup from tasting cooked.
- OFF THE HEAT for the lime juice, fish sauce, palm sugar and chillies. Lime juice boiled goes flat and faintly bitter.
- Taste: it should be rich first, then sour, then salty, with the heat arriving late. Less sharp than tom yam and far more rounded.
- Coriander over the top. Lift the lemongrass out before serving, or warn whoever is eating it.
Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.
Filed under Thailand · All recipes