Yellow curry

The mildest of the curries, carried by turmeric and dry spice rather than by chilli.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken, chicken stock, curry paste, which usually contains shrimp paste, fish sauce.

Ingredients

• 900 g chicken thighs, in large pieces
• 700 ml coconut milk
• 4 tablespoons yellow curry paste
• 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 3 potatoes, in chunks
• 2 onions, in wedges
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 300 ml chicken stock
• 2 tablespoons oil

Method

1. DRY SPICE DOES THE WORK HERE, NOT CHILLI. Turmeric and curry powder carry it, and the heat is almost absent. That makes it the one curry on this site where the spices can be tasted individually, and it also means they have to be cooked properly or the whole pot tastes of raw powder.
2. BLOOM THE POWDERS IN OIL SEPARATELY from the paste, 30 seconds over a medium heat, before the paste joins them. Ground turmeric and curry powder need fat and they scorch over a bare flame in under a minute.
3. Paste in with them, fried 3 minutes until it darkens.
4. 200 ml of the coconut milk in and boiled hard 3 minutes until it splits and the oil runs yellow at the edges.
5. Chicken in, turned to coat, 4 minutes.
6. Remaining coconut milk and the stock in. Fish sauce and palm sugar.
7. Simmer uncovered 25 minutes.
8. FRY THE POTATOES SEPARATELY until gold, 6 minutes, before they go in for the last 15. Boiled in the sauce from raw they break up and thicken it to sludge.
9. Onions in for the last 10 minutes, so they soften without disappearing.
10. Taste at the end and expect to want more salt than seems right. Without chilli to carry it, this curry needs the fish sauce pushed further than the others.

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