Panang Curry - Thai style

The first step is to chop and soak dried chilies. This will take about an hour. If you don’t like spicy, make sure to remove all the seeds. This can be done easily by shaking the chopped chilies. All of the seeds will fall out. You can also see in the video.

Meanwhile, prepare the meat. Cut it into thin slices. In this dish I use pork. You can use any kinds of meat that you like such as beef or chicken.

If you are using red meat, like pork and beef, you need to stew them in ½ cup tale part or skimmed coconut milk (If you are using canned coconut milk, you can dilute it with 1:1 water) until it’s softened. I usually do about an hour. Note* If it’s going dry, you can add more coconut milk a little at a time. In the end, you don’t want a lot of liquid left because you want to add as much juice is to your curry as possible. This juice is full of flavour If you are using chicken or seafood, there is no need to pre-cook the meat because they are easy to cook and will take no longer than 10 minutes.

In Thai cuisine, we are quite delicate about every process of cooking. To grind good curry paste you need to think about what goes first, in order to make a fine paste.

In the case of Panang curry, the first thing that needs to go in is chilies. Chilies have a thick skin and it’s hard to grind every single bit of them. The method is to grind it along with salt. Salt will help to rough out the texture, therefore, chilli pieces won’t slip while grinding.

After that, you can add other herbs, and oh, grind your spice separately also otherwise they won’t catch the pestle because they are tiny little things.

The lasting ingredients that you want to add is shallot. Shallots is soft and juicy, it’s super easy to grind but if you put it in the first thing, everything else is going to be so hard to grind because there will be water splash everywhere and you won’t be able to really grind fully.

Start with cracking the coconut cream. Put a pot or pan over medium heat and add coconut cream.

When it’s hot, and start to bubble on the side, add the curry paste and consistently stir. Slowly add more coconut cream. You will notice when the coconut cream starts to crack. It will be red oil floating on the top. Not much though. You can pause for 30 seconds if you can’t see it. Add the rest of the coconut cream in. At this point, your coconut cream should be cracked and you can smell aromatic scent from curry paste.

Add the meat that we prepare earlier with its juice. If you finish with a lot of juice, you don’t have to add them all in. You only need about 1/3 of a cup.

Flavour the curry with fish sauce and palm sugar. Now, if you are making your own curry paste with this recipe, you will need about 1 Tsp of coconut sugar and about 2Tsp of fish sauce. You can add more according to your liking. If you are using pre-made curry paste, it tends to be saltier so be careful when you add fish sauce. The best way is to taste as you go.

Break kaffir lime leaves and let it infuse into the curry for 10 minutes.

Turn off the stove and top with finely slices kaffir lime leaves and Prik Chi Fa chilis. Serve with the Thai-style classic steamed rice or Roti.