Red Curry Paste
Red Curry Paste
I must admit that there are decent store bought curry pastes. But once you learn how to make your own, you’ll never go back. It will also cost you half the price.Let’s talk about some of the ingredients. All Thai curry pastes will have lemongrass, galangal, and lime zest or leaves. Then they will have some type of dried or fresh chili pepper with varying amounts of garlic, shallots, cilantro root, white peppercorns, coarse salt, and shrimp paste. This is pretty much the base for all curry pastes. Green curry paste will have these ingredients, but use fresh green Thai chilies, plus coriander, cumin, and fresh basil to get the green color. Panang curry paste add in coriander, cumin, and roast peanuts. Massaman curry paste adds in cumin, coriander, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.What makes red curry red is the use of dried red chilies. Guajillo chilies are a good base to start with the paste. They are fairly mild in heat. To add heat to the curry paste, I added 4 dried Thai chilies. I would give the heat level a 5/10 to the curry paste. Add another 4 to make it spicier. Once I had the chilies ground, I added all the other ingredients to my blender with a couple of tbsp of water. With a few pulses, scraping down the sides with a spatula, and a few more pulses, the paste was ready in about a minute.If you really want to make it traditionally, you will need to use a large mortar and pestle. Here is the specific order in which you will pound the ingredients into the paste: pound lemongrass, galangal, cilantro root, lime zest, white peppercorns, and salt until a fine paste; add in the ground chilies and mix; add in the garlic and shallots, pounding them into the paste until fine; add in the shrimp paste and pound into the rest of the ingredients. You may need to add a little bit of water if the paste is too dry. This takes a lot of work. A good 10 minutes of pounding as opposed to 1 minute of blending. If you want to be a purist about making the curry paste, go for it. Either way, you will get the same results.I like to make my curry pastes in large batches, freezing down what I won’t immediately use. This particular recipe will give you 2 recipes worth of my red curry with chicken recipe. The curry paste itself is good for 1 week in the refrigerator. Anything past that should be frozen.
Equipment
- Blender, food processor, or mortar and pestle
Ingredients
- 8 large dried guajilo chilies seeded
- 4 small dried Thai chilies seeded
- 1/4 tsp white peppercorns
- 1 tsp coarse salt
- 1/3 cup shallots
- 1 head garlic peeled
- 3 tbsp lemongrass
- 1 tbsp galangal chopped
- 1 tsp cilantro root
- 1 tsp lime zest or 4 lime leaves
- 1 tsp shrimp paste
Instructions
- Add the dried peppers, white peppercorns, and salt to a spice grinder. Grind until fine. Fine grinding.
- Add all of the ingredients to a food processor or blender.
- Blend or process until it becomes a paste. You will probably need to add a little bit of water at a time if it becomes too dry. Carefully add a tbsp at a time. Scrap down the sides of the blender or food processor with a rubber spatula to make sure that all the ingredients have been incorporated with one another.
You must be logged in to post a comment.