Ever get intimidated about the idea of making your own Thai yellow curry paste? You can make this paste from scratch in under 10 minutes. The freshest flavors and the perfect texture to add to your soups and noodles and perfect for marinating all your proteins, chicken, beef, tofu. It’s all gonna be perfect with some curry paste love.
This Thai yellow curry paste is what gives grilling it’s flavor, noodles their texture and soup their kick. We can skip the jarred stuff and make our own. Yes, it may seem like a longer ingredient list, but it is just basics like garlic, ginger, and turmeric that you more than likely already have or will only need to make a quick trip to go and get.
Thai Yellow Curry Paste
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Yellow curry paste is a staple in lots of Thai and Indian recipes. It’s fragrant and full of aromatics that bring all the flavors together and make them sing. But of course, there are a couple of other curry pastes that can add to your cooking repertoire. My other two faves are Thai red curry paste and Thai green curry paste.
But what’s the difference between Thai yellow curry paste and the others?
Thai yellow curry is
- A mellow, sweet and mild curry paste based on turmeric and curry powder blended with lemongrass, ginger, garlic, cilantro and dried chillies.
- Usually the mildest of the three curries. It has an almost perfume quality from the kaffir lime leaves. But it does still bring some heat. This is the Thai version of Indian yellow curry.
- It is one of the most versatile of the curry pastes out there because of it’s mild flavor and gentle spicy heat.
How to make Thai yellow curry paste step by step
- Start with prepping all of your ingredients. Peel the garlic and shallots. Get the chilies ready etc.
- Measure out all of your ingredients and place them in the bowl of a food processor. This is where you can decide how hot you’d like your curry paste. See the notes on the recipe card for the details.
- Blend all of the ingredients until they’re a chunky paste.
- You can blend the paste further if you’re after something really smooth. I personally prefer a little texture in there and don’t take mine quite as far as I could.
Curry Paste FAQ’s
Do I need to roast the garlic and shallots first?
No. You don’t have to. This recipe is about speed and skips that step. I also like the bite and heat that the paste has with raw shallots and garlic. And because the paste cooks out whenever I add it to my recipes it mellows slightly anyway. If you’re after a much more mellow paste, then, by all means, you can roast the ingredients at 350ºF for about 30 minutes wrapped well in foil.
How do I use this curry paste to make a simple sauce?
The easiest sauce to make with this curry paste is simple to add a tin of coconut milk to about a 1/4 cup of the curry paste and bring it all to a boil. Add in some noodles and some tofu or chicken for the perfect easy noodle soup.
This recipe makes quite a bit of paste. What should I do with the rest? Does it freeze?
This curry paste is perfect for freezing. Simple place it in a ziplock or reusable bag and freeze it. Because of the texture of the curry paste, all you need to do is cut off what you need for each recipe and pop the rest back into the freezer.
It will be perfectly understandable if, after making this curry paste recipe, you wanted to use this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner forever. And we all lived happily ever after in Thai yellow curry heaven! ♥
Recipes for Thai Yellow Curry
- Thai Yellow Curry Sweet Potato Soup
- Thai Curry Noodle Bowls. This recipe does use red curry paste but yellow works beautifully here too.
- Easy Thai Coconut Chicken Skewers
- Recipe For Thai Red Curry Paste
- Recipe For Thai Green Curry Paste
Tools used to make this Thai Yellow Curry
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Homemade Thai Yellow Curry Paste
Ingredients
- 4 cloves garlic peeled
- 2 stalks lemongrass bruised with the back of a knife
- 2 shallots peeled and cut in half
- 4- inch piece of ginger peeled
- 1 teaspoon black cumin seeds
- 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- 1 Tablespoon mild curry powder
- 1 Tablespoon fenugreek seeds
- 2 kaffir lime leaves fresh or dried
- 2 Tablespoons fish sauce soy sauce for vegetarians, tamari for gluten-free
- zest and juice of 2 limes
- 4-6 dried red chillies
Instructions
- Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a food and blend until a chunky paste forms.
- Freeze the paste in a ziplock or reusable bag. Cut off what you need per recipe and keep the remaining paste frozen.
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