February 07, 2013

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
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
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. 

Frying the chiles and garlic in olive oil
The chiles and garlic in olive oil
- Add the leek and cook for about 2 minutes longer.  


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


Adding in the chicken broth and coconut milk
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 opted to add mushrooms instead of peas
We added mushrooms instead of peas
Remove the lemongrass and stir in the cilantro just before serving.


The finished Tom Kha Gai soup!
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.

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4 comments:

  1. yum... that is pretty close to my recipe, which we love. I'll make it for you when you're back in town! I also just perfected pad thai and found an incredible and extremely quick & easy recipe for yellow chicken curry. ok, now I'm hungry!

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    1. Ooohh! Our other two favorite dishes! We'll take you up on that deal! We can have a puppy date. :o)

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  2. This looks sooo delicious!!!

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    1. Oh, you can bet it was. We ate it all in one go...the little piggies that we are. :o)

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