Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Thai food has always seemed far too complex to attempt, but this recipe is shockingly easy and magically tasty. Probably because the most difficult part of this fantastical assortment of ingredients (the curry paste), is easily purchased in stores. Of course, it's far more rewarding if you make the paste yourself, but we're not always going for rewarding. 

We're going for awesome. And by gum, that's what we're getting! This is a creamy, coconutty, spicy, super duper comfort food that is a strangely Asian version of chicken noodle soup. It's a multi-layered series of flavors, which is a fancy way of saying that it will rock your socks in more ways than one.

You can find the original recipe here. 

You will need:

2 cans coconut milk (I favor the "lite" versions)

2+ cups chicken broth (I was making my own, so it's not in the picture)

2 chicken breasts

1 extra large tablespoon curry paste (my favorite is red)

2 T fish sauce

2 limes

2 carrots

1 in ginger root, peeled

3 green onions

1 handful bean sprouts

6 oz rice noodles

1 stalk lemon grass

Scoop a decent blob of the thickened cream off the top of one of the coconut milk cans and put it in a large pot with the paste over medium heat.

The "lite" coconut milk won't really have this, so just pour some into the pot and go with it. Pretend it's fattier than it really is, your imagination will do the rest!

While that heats up, slice the chicken very thinly.

Once the mixture in the pot cackles, add the chicken and cook until done.

Meanwhile, shred your carrots, ginger, slice the lemon grass into smaller chunks, and zest the limes. 

Add the remaining coconut milk, chicken stock, fish sauce, juice from both limes, and the above items to the pot. Bring to a simmer and allow to cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat roughly 4-5 cups of water to a boil. I added some bouillon pouches to add flavor and fun. Add the rice noodles and simmer until soft, about 5 minutes. The original recipe calls for the noodles to be added straight to the soup, but I found when I made this before that they absorbed ALL of the tasty soup liquid. We can't have a bunch of noodles ruining our soup, so prepping them separately and adding them at the end makes the most sense.

I also threw in some very baby bok choy in the last few minutes, plus the chopped up green onions. 

Remove the lemon grass stalks and ladle into bowls. I threw a baguette into the oven to crisp up, which went very well with the broth.

Super noms!