An easy Thai curry is always good to have in your repertoire. This one, with chicken, sweet potatoes and green beans, is a fragrant joy and will fast become a family favourite.
When you’re making a Thai curry – particularly on a week night – it can be difficult to find the balance between ease and taste. The easiest Red Thai curries are the ones you buy in jars, but they don’t have the taste or freshness you want. The other end of the scale is making your own paste from scratch – doable and delicious, but perhaps not the amount of ease that you’re after.
This is my middle ground. I use a Thai red curry paste, I add lots of extra fragrant ingredients, and you get a delicious Thai red chicken curry in 40 minutes with very little effort (just a bit of chopping at the start). Yum!
This is a fab meal for meal prepping – make a big batch on Sunday and either keep in the fridge for a week or store individual portions in the freezer.
Ingredients, Substitutions and Variations
- Ginger, garlic, lemongrass – these are easy to find the ingredients that will take your curry to the next level.
- Thai red curry paste – be sure to buy a paste, not a sauce, and I’d recommend getting the best one you can afford.
- Chicken stock and coconut milk – using both chicken stock and coconut milk here makes a really flavourful curry sauce – much more so than if you just use coconut milk.
- Kaffir lime leaves, sugar, fish sauce – these add that extra level of Thai flavour to the curry.
- Chicken, sweet potatoes, green beans – if you wanted to make this curry vegetarian, you could omit the chicken and increase the amount of vegetables.
How to Cook the Curry
In a large pan, cook the red curry paste, lemongrass, ginger and garlic until fragrant.
Add 300ml chicken stock, diced chicken thighs, coconut milk.
Add palm sugar, fish sauce and sweet potatoes. Stir then simmer for 30 minutes until the chicken and sweet potatoes are cooked.
Add green beans and cook for another 5 minutes.
- You don’t need to precook the chicken It will poach in the sauce and soak up all of that wonderful flavour.
- Get ahead This is a brilliant meal for meal prep and freezing. Cook as per the recipe then allow it to cool and freeze for up to three months.
- To serve I love my Thai red curry over jasmine rice, but you can go for any type of rice you prefer, or eat with flatbreads.
Easy Thai Red Chicken and Sweet Potato Curry
Ingredients
- 4 cloves garlic
- 40 grams ginger
- 2 lemongrass sticks
- 50 grams Thai red curry paste
- 600 grams chicken thighs skinless and boneless
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 300 ml chicken stock
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 5 kaffir lime leaves
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 170 grams green beans
- 2 sweet potatoes
Instructions
- Peel and finely dice the garlic and ginger. Use a knife to bruise the lemongrass, but keep it whole.
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the Thai red curry paste, garlic, ginger and lemongrass. Cook for 2 minutes.
- Pour in the chicken stock and cook for another 5 minutes. Cut your chicken into bite size pieces and add to the saucepan, along with the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce and kaffir lime leaves. Stir well.
- Chop the sweet potatoes into bite size pieces (no need to peel) and add to the pan. Simmer for 25 minutes, until soft.
- Cut the green beans into small chunks and add to the pan. Cook for another 5 minutes. Taste and season with salt as required.
Video
Perfect for meal prep, this is a great way of adding flavour to shop bought curry pastes!