Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Chicken Coconut Curry Noodle Soup

This is adapted from a couple recipes. When we make it, it's sort of "until it tastes good," so this is really just a general guide to how to make it:

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 2 (14-ounce) cans unsweetened coconut milk
  • 1/2 tablespoon (sweet) curry powder plus or minus a tablespoon to taste
  • Sriracha to taste
  • 3-4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (say 1 squeeze of half a lime)
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onion
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro (to taste, we prefer more toward 1/2)
  • 2 packages ramen noodles (just the noodles! Not the flavor packets!)
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • Fish Sauce to taste (we go about 1/2tsp, or you can substitute with mushroom sauce or just leave this out entirely)
  • salt and pepper to taste


Bring the broth, coconut milk, and curry powder to a simmer in a soup pot. Add chicken and simmer until it's just barely cooked through, about four minutes. Add the ramen noodles and cook until they're tender (about another minute). You may need to add a little more water at this point. You decide. Now, take it off the heat and add everything else (lime juice, green onion, brown sugar, fish sauce, salt, pepper, and sriracha or other hot sauce, and cilantro). Taste it. Adjust seasoning as you desire. We usually use a lot of curry powder.

Thoughts: This is very good, and hard to mess up. Problem is that it's kind of annoying to cook with meat sometimes. There's a lot of room in this recipe for adjustment to your own taste, as well. Don't be afraid of over-seasoning (except maybe with the salt) - you can always add more stock or water.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - good, hard to mess up.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey fatty, how do you think it would work if i substituted tofu for the chicken and used vegetable broth instead. i don't like chicken.

Daniel said...

Yeah, that would work just fine.

But if it were me, I would first stir fry that tofu in something (Soy sauce? Mushroom Sauce? Chili sauce? Curry powder?) to give it some more flavor, jerk.

Em said...

Try stirfrying the tofu in oil with some garlic and peppers, or marinating it first in a soy sauce and brown sugar mixture. You can also try looking around for different types of tofu - pre-fried or herbed might be nice (well, maybe not herbed for curry, but you know.)

Em said...

Oh, (sorry to spam your blog), typically mushroom sauce substitutes for oyster sauce and soy sauce for fish sauce. Mushroom sauce is thicker and sweeter than soy or fish sauce.

Anonymous said...

interesting, em, i will take this into consideration when i try to make this.

~*~*StEvE*~*~

Daniel said...

A note to all who are curious:
I used a different kind of coconut milk today, and when it reached a boil the soup pretty much expanded out of the pot. Then it went onto the stove. Where it caught fire. Setting off the smoke alarm.

Lesson: a watched pot never burns your apartment down.