wanderfoundus
While unable to travel, we have been thinking of ways to still feel like we are out exploring and experiencing new cultures and locations. One way we thought would work was recreating our favorite meals during our travels! We started doing this once the quarantine began and we have loved trying these out. We hope you do too! With that intro, we would like to bring you our first and favorite recent meal and recipe.
Eric and I were never really fans of Thai food. That is, until we went to Thailand. During our journey in Northern Thailand, we found multiple cooking schools offering authentic cooking classes for Thai cuisine. We thought, “Why not? Lets experience something new!” We were pretty nervous as neither of us are exceptional chefs (I once YouTubed how to cut cauliflower… in my late 20’s…) but we figured if we didn’t know, they would teach us. We had the opportunity to make an appetizer, a main course and a dessert. We each picked three different recipes so that we could bring home six recipes to make if we liked it. Better odds! Luckily we absolutely loved Khao Soi. We have experimented with the recipe that we learned and found some tweaks that make it a little easier!
Khao Soi means ‘cut rice’, although wikipedia says it is possible that it is simply a corruption of the Burmese word for noodles—”khao swè”—which may account for the variations. It is a soup-like coconut milk curry dish with rice noodles, topped with mix of deep-fried crispy egg noodles, pickled mustard greens, shallots, limes, and ground chillies.
Traditionally, Khao Soi also requires shrimp paste to give it more complex flavors. Because we are mainly plant based, we substituted with soy sauce or tamari for now and it was still great!
Also, you can make your own paste or buy it: up to you! However, making the paste old-school with a pestle and mortar took a lot of time and energy as the video below shows… we would recommend either using a food processor or our favorite store bought paste.
INGREDIENTS
KHAO SOI PASTE (From Scratch)
- 2 hot red chillies (fresh or dried)
- 6 garlic cloves
- 5 cm / 2 ” piece of ginger, peeled and roughly sliced
- 4 tbsp / ¼ cup coriander stalks, chopped
- 2 lemongrass stalks, white inner part only, roughly chopped
- 2 small shallots, roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds or ½ tsp ground coriander
- 1½ tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp curry powder (We use McCormick)
KHAO SOI PASTE (Store Bought)
REMAINING INGREDIENTS
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2 cm / 2 ” piece of ginger, peeled and roughly sliced
- 1 small shallots, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 4 14-oz. cans unsweetened coconut milk
- Your choice of Protein
- 1 lb egg noodles or rice noodles
- 3 tablespoons (or more) fish sauce (such as nam pla or nuoc nam) (Substitute with Soy Sauce or tamari)
- 1 tablespoon (packed) palm sugar or light brown sugar
- Kosher salt
- Sliced red onion, bean sprouts, cilantro sprigs, crispy fried onions or shallots, chili oil, and lime wedges (for serving)
METHOD
- If making curry paste from scratch: Place all the paste ingredients in a herb chopper or a food processor, add about 4 tbsp of water and process until you get a uniform paste.
- Prepare your protein source: for us, we used tofu. We like to cut the tofu in 1 in squares and coat them with curry powder and put it in the air fryer for 12 minutes to give it more form and texture!
- Cook noodles according to the instructions on the packet.
- Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a medium size pot. Start by sauteing shallots, ginger, and garlic until soft, and then add the red curry paste to make this soup more aromatic, cooking for about 3-4 minutes.
- Add coconut milk and allow it to come to the boil. Season with vegan fish sauce (tamari or soy sauce), fresh lime juice and sugar to taste.
- Pour over cooked noodles and serve with deep-fried crispy egg noodles and a lime wedge.
Give it a try! If you do, let us know how you liked it or updated this recipe to fit your taste buds.