Introduction
Khao Soi is a popular coconut curry and noodles street food dish found in Northern Thailand that has many regional variants depending on where you're ordering it. In Chinag Mai, it is traditionally served with chicken, however I've seen it served with beef and minced pork as well. While my version is made with egg noodles, you can also substitute for rice noodles as well.
The first steps to cooking Khao Soi is to make you're own curry paste. Sure, you can easily buy a pot of premade red curry at the store but I found that no matter how much you put in or how long you cook the curry, it will never taste homemade.
Equipment
For this part of the recipe you are going to need the following kitchen equipment in order to prepare the dish:
- Cutting board or surface
- Mortar and pestle
- Knife for slicing and crushing (chef or cleaver)
- Vegetable peeler
- Zester (optional)
- Pan for roasting
- Heat source
Ingredients
For this recipe I'm planning on making two full-sized serving so in order to scale the recipe, you'll need to either double or half the ingredients depending on how many servings you want. Please keep in mind that freshly made curry should last a couple of days in the fridge but no longer than that. The following ingredints are required, substitute where necessary:
- Cardamom, six pods
- Coriander, 1 tsp
- Shallot, 1 large half
- Garlic, 2 or 3 cloves
- Tumeric, a nub
- Ginger, 1 large slice
- Lime zest, 1 tsp
- Lemongrass, 1 half stock
- Thai chili, depends but I'd use two comfortably
- Kosher salt, 1 tsp
- Shrimp paste, 1 Tbsp
Preparation
Heat up your pan on medium high and place your dry spices, the cardamom pods and coriander into the pan alone until they begin to smoke and you can smell the aroma. Remove the spices and place into the mortar.
Next, place your peeled shallot, garlic, ginger, tumeric and lemongrass into the pan as well. You can add the Thai chilis whole. Now roast all of these aromatics until they begin to dry out and take on a darker color. Make sure you don't burn anything, especially thge chilis, as this will just add an acrid flavor to your dish.
While the aromatics are roasting, begin to pound your dry spices into a fine powder using the mortar and pestle. Once the aromatics have roasted, remove them from the pan and add them to the mortar one by one. I find it helpful to add a pinch of ther Kosher salt for each ingredient I add, giving you friction in the mix.
You'll need to grind all of your roasted ingredients into a paste and once you're satisfied with it's consistency, there shouldn't be any large chunks of aromatics, go ahead and mix in the shrimp paste and the lime zest.
You can set your curry paste aside for the next step in the cooking process or store it in the fridge for a couple of days. One thing that I've found helpful is to make sure your Thai chilis have been ground very well. There's nothing worse than having a large piece in one bite and the Khao Soi is not meant to be especially spicy hot, either.
Once these steps are complete, head over to Part 2. Cooking the Khao Soi Gai.
