Recipes From the Road- Thai Tom Kha Gai Soup

As you all probably already know, Thai cuisine is one of our favorites. We can usually judge the quality of a Thai restaurant by their soup, and we almost always order the Tom Kha Gai coconut soup. Over the years we've tried recreating the soup at home and have never really found a recipe that has come close to what we've found while eating out...until a few days ago, when my friend Maranda posted a recipe she'd recently tried out herself. We had most of the ingredients on hand so we decided to give it a go, and you know what? This is probably the closest we'll ever get to restaurant quality! If you've been looking to make the soup yourself, I would recommend that you try the this recipe!

Ingredients:

1 tsp coconut oil (we used olive oil)

2 fresh red chiles (we used dried red chiles)

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 large leek

3 cups vegetable or chicken stock

2 cups coconut milk

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast cut into small pieces

2 TBS thai fish sauce

1 inch piece peeled and minced ginger root

1 lemongrass stalk, cut into three sections

2 tsp agave nectar (we used brown sugar)

1 cup peas (we replaced this with mushrooms)

1/3 cup fresh cilantro

Cutting up the raw ingredients: ginger root, cilantro, chiles, leek and garlic 

The remaining ingredients: coconut milk, lemon grass stock,
chicken stock and fish sauce

Directions:

- Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the chiles and garlic and cook about 2 minutes. 

The chiles and garlic in olive oil

- Add the leek and cook for about 2 minutes longer.  

Adding the leek to the mix

- Stir in the stock and coconut milk and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. 

Stirring in the coconut milk and chicken broth

- Add the chicken, fish sauce, lemongrass sections, ginger, nectar and simmer covered for about 15 minutes until the chicken is tender, stirring occasionally. 

- Add the peas and cook for 3 minutes. 

We added mushrooms instead of peas

- Remove the lemongrass and stir in the cilantro just before serving.

The finished product!

The soup didn't take all that long to prepare and made a medium sized portion. We finished it between the two of us for dinner that evening. Num, num, num!!

Hope you enjoy this recipe!

Happy Tom Kha Gai!

M.